This study explains how participatory action research has been used to create a new intersubjective awareness of the phenomenon of organizational culture. The question of creating voluntary democratic participation has been crucial for all stakeholders in this case. Through this two-and-a-half-year study including more than 30 workshops, in a marine industry, we have managed to create new beliefs about being part of and responsible for creating the organizational culture. With these new understandings of the culture, which has been dramatically changed, the participants have created new personal knowledge about themselves and working in an organization like this. The management group have discovered that they are responsible for their own knowledge creation.

Purpose In accordance with Latour, this paper aims to respond to the call for a “down-to-earth” post-learning organization approach to sustainability, which is critical of Senge’s conception of learning organization (LO). Design/methodology/approach “Gaia storytelling” is used to define a LO that is “down to earth.” Findings Gaia is understood through the notion of a critical zone, which foregrounds the local and differentiated terrestrial conditions in which life on Earth is embedded. Practical implications Gaia storytelling implies perceiving LO as a network of storytelling practices enacted and told by unique creative citizens. Such an organization sustains and grows through several entangled storytelling cycles that allow Gaia to shape learning. Social implications The article distinguishes five different storytelling cycles as a way to explore how the Gaia theater cycle connects to other cycles. The four other cycles are called Gaia thinking, explorative, creative and Gaia truth-telling. Originality/value A Gaian LO is a new beginning for LO.

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