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The authors argue that consultants are of two types: self‐promoting gurus and educators. Gurus that pontificate and promote their proprietary problem solving techniques do not educate their clients. They promote maxims that define rules of behavior but do not increase the competence of managers. They promote their proprietary solution as a fix for all problems instead of trying to increase managerial understanding of a particular corporate puzzle. They provide maxims that are really platitudes and panaceas without proof of effectiveness. A significant proportion of the advice produced by such management gurus is either incorrectly inferred from data (but nevertheless may be true) or is unsubstantiated by genuine evidence. Examples are drawn from the work of Peters, Covey, de Geus, and Hamel. Recommendations for providing management with defensive measures include: recognition that flawed research techniques produces flawed evidence; recognition that many seemingly wise maxims are really platitudes; and effective selection and use of internal and external consultants who perceive their mission to be the individualized education of managers and the solution of their organization’s particular problems.

While the importance of organizational learning for sustainability has been stressed by a number of authors in the literature, the practicalities of how organizational leaders might foster such learning are seldom treated. This paper seeks to demonstrate that there is much that could be learned from the aviation industry about organizational learning practice that could be gainfully applied by organizations in attempting to address the demands of triple bottom line sustainability.

The exemplary safety record of the US commercial aviation industry is explored in this paper, and the principal functions of its underlying learning and adaptive system are reviewed. Generalized application of such a learning and adaptive system in an organization operating according to triple bottom line sustainability principles is described.

Through the interaction of various functional components described in the paper, the commercial aviation industry has created a learning and adaptation support system that has significantly and effectively increased air travel safety. The characteristics of such a learning and adaptive system can be employed by any organization to vastly improve its performance as it pursues triple bottom line sustainability.

The learning and adaptive system approach presented expands the steps of understanding, creating and delivering triple bottom line sustainability by changing internal processes, organizational learning, and employee mindsets.

To propose a complementary approach to traditional project management competency training, and approach that is based on a different worldview.

The research for this paper was based primarily on literature searches as well as conducting interviews with a number of project managers.

The current approach has limitations. Generally, it is good for doing projects in a stable environment.

The new model for project management could be tested and compared to the traditional model.

The practical implication/consequence is an improvement in the project performance. Specifically, the new approach requires the project managers to mange the interaction of the parts of the project rather than managing each part separately.

The problem with project performance is paradigmatic, i.e. using a wrong mindset.

In December 1991, General Motors Corp. announced that it would lay off 74,000 employees. The same month, The New York Times reported that Xerox Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., IBM Corp., and General Motors, among other organizations, expect many 1991 layoffs to be permanent. Some feel that's because this latest US recession is not a cyclical downturn but an overdue adjustment indicative of a relocation of the world economy.

Think tank dynamo Russell L. Ackoff advocates that managers scrap the way they normally approach problem solving in general and innovation in particular. He champions a process called “synthetic” thinking, a way of thinking about and designing a system that derives the properties and behavior of its parts from the functions required of the whole. His suggestions to managers for promoting creativity, innovation and better strategy are: (1) By understanding what’s happening inside and outside the organization, then by developing a vision of what the organization could be within the emerging culture and environment. Next by preparing a strategy for reaching or moving closer to that vision. (2) Through designs that lead require creativity. Creativity involves a three‐step process. The first step is to identify assumptions that you make which prevent you from seeing the alternatives to the ones that you currently see. These are self‐imposed constraints. The second step is to deny these constraining assumptions. The third is to explore the consequences of the denials. Creativity of individuals can be enhanced by practice, particularly under the guidance of one who is creative. (3) By becoming aware of the nature of the fundamental intellectual transformations now taking place and what their implications are for the future of business and management generally. And by attaching themselves to people who show creative thinking and engage with them in the process of redesigning, from scratch and with no constraints, the systems they manage.

This Special Issue is intended to heighten awareness of the importance of organizational learning in addressing the demands of organizational sustainability, and in particular triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability. A definition of TBL sustainability is provided, together with an exploration of the practical issues relevant to adopting organizational learning in addressing it. By exploring research and practitioner viewpoints bearing on sustainability‐related applications of organizational learning, this Special Issue aims to help organizations remove barriers to achieving sustainability goals and catalyze the progress for an organization on its sustainability journey.

General sustainability‐related concerns and challenges associated with organizational learning are reviewed, and individual authors voice their understanding of the application of organizational leaning to particular aspects of sustainability based on their research, their case studies, and the extant literature.

Findings include enhanced understanding of the incompatibility of single‐ and double loop learning in TBL sustainability contexts, and the required emphasis on double‐loop learning to progress sustainability aims successfully. The effectiveness of dialogic interaction is described in achieving a transition towards sustainability in people, organizations and society as a whole. How individual worldviews called “our ecological selves” allow creation of the conditions for confronting global environmental challenges is explained. Contributions are made to the understanding of hybrid organizations through the case of a Brazilian networked organization, and a paradox view of management based on the theories of organizational learning and managerial cybernetics is applied to enlighten the understanding of sustainability. The learning and adaptive system of the US commercial aviation industry is explored and the application of such a system in an organization operating according to triple bottom line sustainability principles is described.

The opinions and research presented provide new and unique understanding of how organizational learning may contribute to organizational sustainability. Further value is added via the assessment of means to progress the sustainability ideal, the identification of barriers, and the many practical examples of means to facilitate progress toward that ideal.