From Stagnating to Learning: How Affordance and Agency Shape These 4 Types of Organisations
- Darren Tang
- Jun 25
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 30
In today’s fast-changing business landscape, organisations must be agile, adaptive, and committed to continuous learning to stay competitive. However, not all organisations are equally equipped to learn.
According to Philippe Carré and Michael Pearn, an organisation’s learning potential is shaped by two key dimensions:
Organisational Affordance: The degree to which the organisation’s environment, including its culture, structure, and systems, actively supports and enables learning.
Employee Agency: The degree to which individuals are motivated, confident, and capable of engaging in meaningful learning efforts.
And the interaction between these two elements will give rise to four distinct types of organisations:
The Stagnating Organisation
The Frustrated Organisation
The Frustrating Organisation
The Learning Organisation
1. The Stagnating Organisation
Low organisational affordance × Low employee agency
Stagnating organisations rely heavily on past experiences and habitual practices. They lack the structural support and employee motivation to foster a learning culture.
Characteristics:
Learning is discouraged or ignored at all levels
Employees are disengaged and lack the confidence to develop
Structures and systems inhibit learning and change
Risks:
High vulnerability to disruption and market shifts
Loss of engagement, innovation, and top talent
2. The Frustrated Organisation
High organisational affordance × Low employee agency
In a frustrated organisation, leadership may actively promote learning and invest in the right structures, tools, and opportunities. However, employees remain disengaged, anxious, or lack the self-efficacy to embrace learning and change.
Characteristics:
Training and development programmes exist but are underutilised
Employees fear failure or doubt their capacity to learn
Emotional and psychological readiness for learning is low
Risks:
Wasted investments in learning infrastructure
Persistent disengagement and lack of innovation despite support
3. The Frustrating Organisation
Low organisational affordance × High employee agency
In frustrating organisations, employees are eager and capable of learning, but the organisation provides minimal support. Learning is often self-directed, informal, and disconnected from broader business goals.
Characteristics:
Employees show initiative but face structural obstacles
Leadership undervalues or deprioritises formal learning
Opportunities for growth are limited or inconsistent
Risks:
High-performing individuals may burn out or leave
Innovation lacks alignment and sustainability
4. The Learning Organisation
High organisational affordance × High employee agency
A learning organisation is most adaptive and future-ready. Its environment and people are both aligned towards the value of continuous learning. Employees feel empowered and supported, and learning gets embedded in everyday work practices.
Characteristics:
Learning is ongoing, purposeful, and strategically aligned
Psychological safety allows for experimentation and open feedback
Teams and individuals regularly reflect and improve
Benefits:
Higher innovation and long-term adaptability
Increased employee engagement and retention
Strong competitive advantage driven by collective learning
Why Understanding These Four Organisational Types Matters?
Most organisations may not fit into a single quadrant as different teams, functions, or leadership may reflect different learning dynamics.
However, understanding your organisation’s overall learning profile is a crucial first step since any attempt to enhance employee motivation (agency) without addressing organisational barriers (affordance) – or vice versa – will often lead to limited or unsustainable progress.
To build a true learning organisation would require both dimensions to be cultivated in tandem, and only then can learning become continuous, strategic, and embedded in how your organisation works and grows.
At WiP, we partner with forward-thinking companies to build the capacity to learn continuously, collectively, and with purpose.
Interested in transforming your company into a learning organisation?
Download our whitepaper or Contact Us to learn more.
