The Learning Organisation (LO) is both a concept and a particular methodology within the larger domain of Organisational Development (OD). To fully appreciate the premises of LO, it is necessary to fall back on the main premises of OD, beginning with the view of the organisation as an open system. Many of the established concepts of systems science as applied to organisational systems such as system robustness, system intelligence, and system proactivity have a direct bearing on the capacity for continuous learning in the organisation.