EDITORIAL What does “learning organization” mean? Anders Örtenblad Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University, Bodø, Norway Abstract Purpose – The paper aims to offer an overview of the definition of the concept of learning organization to be used, related to and taken as a starting point for further conceptual developments by others writing about and using the learning organization concept. An additional purpose is to suggest how the concept of learning organization could be demarcated to define what would be demanded from any particular organization to be counted as a learning organization. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper. To define the learning organization, a label-focused approach and a content-focused approach are used. A contextual approach is suggested as the most appropriate tool for demarcating the concept of learning organization. Findings – It is suggested that there are four versions of learning organization, which can all be related to three different forms of organizational aspects. Furthermore, a contextual approach is suggested to demarcate how to define learning organization to develop a much-needed contingency model, which places reasonable demands on organizations in various contexts to qualify them as learning organizations. Originality/value – An overview definition, which anybody writing about the learning organization could relate to, is presented. It is also discussed what a learning organization is not, something which only few others have done, and a contextual approach to demarcating the learning organization concept is suggested. Keywords Learning organization, Organizational learning, Definition, Concept, Contingency model, Demarcation Paper type Conceptual paper Many people still ask “what is a learning organization, what does the concept mean?” This is entirely understandable. The learning organization – or for that matter organizational learning – is a concept (or phenomenon) that is not easily defined. Questions such as “are there any true learning organizations?” and “are there any organizations that are not learning?” arise. These questions are fair, and so, it is also fair that I, as Editor-in-Chief of The Learning Organization, the journal that publishes research on the learning organization and organizational learning, try to give an idea of how these questions may be answered, or at least offer my perspective on these issues. First, though, I will give a historical background to the term “learning organization”. The “learning organization” term in a historical perspective The term learning organization was coined by Senge (1990) in his best-selling book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Senge, 1990). Senge’s name has since then been almost synonymous with the idea of learning organization, and he is often considered to be the guru of the learning organization (Jackson, 2001), even if he by TLO 25,3 150 Received 1 February 2018 Accepted 6 February 2018 The Learning Organization Vol. 25 No. 3, 2018 pp. 150-158 © Emerald Publishing Limited 0969-6474 DOI 10.1108/TLO-02-2018-0016 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-6474.htm