Organisational learning by hearts:a framework to explore organisational moral and immoral learning

Abstract

The thesis aims to gain a deeper understanding of the organisational moral development (OMD) phenomenon. Three specific issues have been identified that hinders from gaining a deeper understanding of OMD: lack of ontological foundation for interdisciplinarity, inadequate moral philosophy and lack of understanding on strategic renewal in the moral dimension. To this, the thesis provides an alternative view of OMD by synthesising three perspectives: the field of organisational learning (OL), the meta-theory of critical realism (CR), and the worldview of Islam. As a result, a framework called ‘organisational learning by hearts’ (OLH) is developed, founded upon sound ontological foundation for interdisciplinarity, with adequate moral philosophy and an understanding on moral strategic renewal process. At the centre of the framework is the ‘heart’, the knowing essence of human, and its potential to become moral, as well as immoral. This then affects the process of organisational development: the moral and wise individual would contribute towards the moral development of the organisation, whereas the immoral individual would contribute towards immoral development. Two extreme ends of OMD are also conceived: organisational moral learning (OML) and organisational immoral learning (OIL). The framework has uncovered various factors and processes that play a part in the overall OMD, and strategies have been developed to ensure moral development. However, the OLH framework is heavily conceptual in nature. An empirical study is thus conducted to enrich the framework with real-life illustration.