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This case study identifies factors influencing the implementation of e‐learning within the Australian Army training context.

A grounded theory approach was used to gain an understanding of the concerns of stakeholders involved in e‐learning implementation. This research included interviews with Army managers, course developers, instructional designers and instructors.

The main factors that were important for respondents involved in e‐learning management, design, development and delivery could be identified. This case study demonstrates the importance of maintaining focus on organisational priorities and learning goals while meeting the demands of change pressures.

This is an initial study to gain an overview of the main issues. More research will be required to understand the Army's e‐learning context and to confirm these findings. Further research will include other stakeholders, including trainees' perspectives and extend to other Army sites.

For effective implementation there needs to be a process of continual adaptation and alignment of e‐learning to reflect changing demands while meeting the priorities of the organisational culture and learners' needs.

This paper analyses the first independent external research into e‐learning in the Australian Army. Although this is a specialised context for e‐learning, the issues raised in this case study will inform research into other workplace e‐learning projects.

This study intends to investigate the extent to which the Sri Lanka Army can be described as a learning organization.

The main tool of analysis used was the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) developed by Marsick and Watkins, with the exclusion of the sections on financial and knowledge performance.

Using the DLOQ, the research found that the dimensions of a learning organization proposed by Marsick and Watkins are present in the Sri Lanka Army, although with some aberrations between different ranks.

The study was conducted without a directly connected dependent variable.

This study shows how even a non‐profit‐oriented organization like the Sri Lanka Army can be informed from a concept like the learning organization, and indeed emphasizes the overarching need for a military organization to operate as a learning organization. Therefore, this research has reiterated the fact that the learning organization is a prescription that all organizations, even not‐for‐profit ones, should ardently pursue. The research also offers recommendations for improvements in the performance of the Sri Lanka Army by identifying certain weaknesses.

By initiating the use of the DLOQ in the Sri Lankan as well as a military context, the study has opened the doors for administering the DLOQ and similar tools for measuring the extent of organizational learning and the presence and strength of learning organizational characteristics in Sri Lanka.

This paper aims to illustrate the need for context-adapted models of military learning organizations (LOs), identify challenges to building LOs in the military and discuss how maturing as an LO provides military organizations a competitive advantage.

This paper highlights the primarily industrial focus of existing literature, discusses a sample of nuanced challenges to building military LOs and posits potential benefits of military LOs future operational environment.

Building military LOs is an area of research that remains underdeveloped. Advancing LO theory requires researchers to consider context and the challenges organizations may encounter during efforts to build LOs.

This paper highlights gaps and alignment in LO theory to advance the argument that context-adapted approaches to building military LOs are needed.

This study aims to describe how the Army and the Army Medical Department matured as a learning organization (LO) during the period after the 2014 Military Health System Review through the incorporation of changes aimed at improving patient safety, data transparency and becoming a high-reliability organization (HRO). This study explores the relationship between HRO and LO concepts by adding to the body of knowledge in both disciplines.

Four large-scale system changes are presented and evaluated against the principles of the LO. Metric data were collected longitudinally and presented as submitted to several nationally-recognized organizations in healthcare quality and safety. Post initiative observations are paired with a corresponding LO principle to assess US Army Medical Command’s (MEDCOM’s) maturation as a LO. System changes/improvements and the advancement of LO principles are discussed.

System improvements, analyzed critically alongside paired LO principles, show strong correlation between high-reliability and LO principles. Despite inherent institutional barriers, this study demonstrates that, when leveraged effectively, the leadership hierarchy and command culture can accelerate transformation into an LO.

This study explores changes implemented in MEDCOM, as it evolved as a stronger LO. It demonstrates how healthcare organizations and other high-risk industries that embrace high-reliability concepts will become better LOs and expands current knowledge on how LO concepts in healthcare can affect better system accountability and improved patient safety. Organizations can learn from MEDCOM’s journey changes that can hasten progress toward adoption of LO principles, especially in hierarchical organizations.

Early in one’s career in psychology, certainly starting in graduate school, if not sooner as a psych major in college, a choice point gradually emerges between seeking a career as a scholar, a scientist, and perhaps as an academic versus pursuing the life of a practitioner, one who applies the work of the former, the scholar. We faculty will often cast this choice in the form of a “tension” between science and practice. Ironically, I have never felt such tension. The purpose of this chapter is to explore choices we make in life and career, the consequences of these choices, and what we can learn in the process, that is, along the way and the implications for organization change and development.

The study aims to propose and test how leadership styles (learning-oriented, transformational and transactional leadership) and a new construct, psychological equality, help overcome the typically negative effect of rank disparity on team learning.

Militaries have a rigid hierarchy, and rank disparity (hierarchy) inhibits team learning. However, little (quantitative) attention has been paid to understanding the factors that might help overcome the inhibiting effect of hierarchy on military team learning. This study evaluates how learning-oriented leadership helps military teams to learn by improving a sense of psychological equality.

Learning-oriented leadership supported greater psychological equality and team learning than either transformational or transactional leadership. Additionally, psychological equality significantly improved team learning. Together, learning-oriented leadership and psychological equality were found to support team learning within hierarchical teams. The findings show that team rank disparity does not inevitably stifle team learning.

Cross-sectional archival and self-report data limits drawing causal conclusions; further, longitudinal studies should be undertaken to extend and test the proposed causal relationship modeled in this study.

Generating team learning within the military does not require dismantling traditional military command, communication and control structures; instead, specific leadership behaviors (e.g., sharing information, coaching and avoiding blame or shame) can support psychological equality and increased team learning within military’s established command and control structures.

This study answered recent calls to identify the contingencies shaping team learning; improving psychological equality enhances team learning while maintaining the benefits of a clear hierarchical structure (e.g. military command and control).

The purpose of this paper is to explore how branches of the USA military conduct leadership development of their members to build on existing knowledge of effective approaches. The military, often credited for its ability to develop leadership competencies, has been overlooked and offers a new context for consideration in training. Training strategies presented may offer organization leaders new insight into enhancing current leadership development programs.

A review of accessible military doctrine in recent decades was conducted to determine leadership development methodology for possible transferability into industry.

The military’s diverse perspectives on service member leadership development offered insightful methods for application in commercial training. Four development strategies were identified and are discussed.

The purpose of the military is unique from non-military organizations and, as such, each of the leadership development training approaches may not be applicable or feasible for traditional employees. Further exploration of leadership development in the US military is required to better understand the impact of the training.

A review of existing literature revealed little evidence of examining the military’s approach to developing leaders, even though employers claim to hire veterans because of their leadership abilities. Each of the identified development components are distinguishable from traditional leadership programs and present readers a series of opportunities to consider.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight in how military expeditionary task forces cope with the dual challenge of organizing and learning, by reflecting on the experiences of Dutch expeditionary task forces in post-conflict missions in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

This paper reflects on the outcomes of a research project into the experiences of operators of different specific expeditionary task forces of the Dutch Armed Forces in dealing with everyday problems in their working environment. The case studies were based on interviews with military personnel of all ranks and focused on relating the process of making sense of environmental dynamics to characteristics of the organizational context.

The case studies indicate that designing and learning become intertwined in the realities of everyday problem-solving in the more complex missions. As task forces are essentially tailor-made for the purpose of specific missions, units initially need to be selected. Subsequently, the design of the task force needs to be adapted to suit local conditions. This challenge interrelates with the everyday challenge for operators of making sense of their environment and finding pragmatic solutions for the everyday problems they are confronted with. In pragmatically solving everyday problems, operators in the cases engaged in working out incomplete or ill-fitting aspects of the task force design.

The findings are relevant for military task forces and in general for organizations that are confronted with dynamically complex environments that rely on temporary structures.

Existing literature on learning and on organizing generally treat these as two related, but essentially separate, phenomena. In the expeditionary military task forces, operators that aimed to develop pragmatic solutions to everyday problems, the processes of learning and organizing became intertwined: units needed to organize to learn and to learn to organize. The paper ends by suggesting a combination of specific circumstances that influences the nature of the interrelation between these processes.

The science of Foresight differs from the commonplace notion of what a science is because it is a metadiscipline – a logical type of science higher than the logical type of disciplinary sciences. It is practical, uses transdisciplinary processes that combine scientific disciplines and often examines counterfactuals in a scientific manner. This study aims to demonstrate that Foresight is a science, by presenting a number of best practices and potential innovations in higher education that could facilitate obtaining skills for Foresight science.

The methods of scientific education that have served us well in the past are inadequate for metadisciplinary sciences such as Foresight. The paper discusses what metadisciplinarity is, using a variety of examples, and distinguishes it from disciplines and ways of crossing disciplinary boundaries. Understanding the essential characteristics of Foresight as a metadisciplinary science leads to identifying current best practices and possible educational innovations in undergraduate education that will facilitate obtaining Foresight skills. Throughout the paper, examples are drawn from the education and professional experience of the author in the USA and Europe.

This paper demonstrates that Foresight is a science and presents a number of best practices and potential innovations in higher education that could facilitate obtaining skills for Foresight science. It identifies barriers to those innovations and approaches to overcome them.

This viewpoint paper clarifies the meaning of the terms interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and metadisciplinarity to identify the essential characteristics of Foresight as a science. Then, it identifies and advocates needed changes in North American higher education to provide earlier and more efficient opportunities for Foresight researchers and users to obtain the skills they need.