Today in the twenty-first century, organizations are experiencing turbulent times due to the complexity, uncertainty and rapid change of the organizational environment obliges organizations to make strategic changes to ensure their existence, the concept of Learning Organization is becoming more relevant.

The main aim of the thesis is to extract pre-requisites that make any organization a learning organization and take a closer look at the university as a Learning Organization. First of all we clarify our understanding of the two terms: Organizational Learning and Learning Organization. The theoretical models of Learning Organizations which was used for analysis is based on the Senge Fifth Discipline model and Garvin’s model of Learning Organization. The importance and necessity for organizations, particularly Higher education organizations, to become Learning Organizations, and the reasons that impede Universities to become Learning Organizations are discussed. This thesis presents the findings from a qualitative study of Baltic Business School (Kalmar University, Sweden), using the interview and case study methodology. The four convergent interviews were used to establish the nine key pre-requisites, as we believe, are necessary for universities to become Learning Organization. Three case studies were used to confirm or disconfirm these nine key pre-requisites.

Key words: Higher education, university, learning organization, organizational learning, change strategy