Importance of Becoming a Learning Organisation - Essay Example

Things move faster every day. To keep up, we must stay on our toes and adapt, change, learn at every opportunity, every day, all the time.” (Marquardt, 1997: 1) Becoming a learning organization is very important for commercial enterprises so as to cope with the today’s rapidly changing environment. As stated by Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 8), “the learning organization is a major source of sustainable advantage”. Pedler et al. (1997), cited in Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 8) further point out that “… learning has become the key developable and tradable commodity of an organization”. Garratt (1999: 203) also explains the reason for the increasing number of learning organizations, “As our world becomes more complex and uncertain, it is crucial that the capability of both individuals and organizations to learn regularly and rigorously from their work is encouraged so that they may adapt rapidly and continuously to their changing environments”. This essay, first of all, will discuss the definitions of learning organization. Secondly it will demonstrate why becoming a learning organization is important followed by the description of the different theoretical perspectives on the characteristics of a learning organization. “A learning company is an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members and consciously transforms itself and its context”. (Pedler et al., 1991, cited in Pedler, 1995: 21) One of the implication of his statement is that a learning organization should focus on the “continuous learning and the development of potential” (Pedler, 1995: 21) not limited in just senior management but also in all employees within the company, and in the business partners of the company such to satisfy stakeholders’ needs. Senge (1990: 3) has the similar viewpoints on the continuous process of organizational transformation, which he defines learning organization as: “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” Braham (1995) also has a similar view which organizations are responsible in ensuring that learning is not hindered and to promote lifelong learning to everyone in the organizations. Such standpoints are also supported by Dixon (1994), cited in Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 16), that she comments a learning organization makes “Intentional use of learning processes at the individual, group and system level to continuously transform the organization in a direction that is increasingly satisfying to stakeholders.” The other implication from Pedler and Aspinwall (1998) is that the self-development of the company should be seen as a whole by integrating each individual’s learning together in the company. According to these definitions, it can easily to be seen that continuous learning/transformation and stakeholders’ satisfaction are two of the key elements of a learning organization. Besides the above-mentioned key elements, Watkins and Marsick (1993), cited in Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 15), portrays the learning organisation as a place where: “Learning takes place in individuals, teams, the organisation interacts… (it)… is a continuous, strategically used process – integrated with, and running parallel to, work… (which)… enhances organisational capacity for innovation and growth. The learning organisation has embedded systems to capture and share learning.” Therefore, share learning and cope with rapidly changing environment are also the key elements to the learning organisation. This view is also supported by Keichel (1990), cited in Pedler and Aspinwall, (1998: 9), which he comments: “The old bureaucratic command-and-control model, even in its current decentralized, supposedly lean and mean version, won’t be up to the challenges ahead: it won’t be up to the challenges ahead: it won’t be fast enough …keen enough …(or) smart and sensitive enough …(we) need a new kind of organization that accommodates radical change, indeed that builds in the capacity to thrive on change” Watkins and Marsick (1993) further mentioned that learning is “collected and distributed, designed into work processes and informs all business dealings and transactions”. From the definitions of learning organization in the previous section, one of the key importances for a company to become a learning organization is to cope with the rapidly changing environment and to deal with uncertainty. As illustrated by Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 7-8), the learning organization “seeks sustainable performance and development through being flexible, adaptive and responsive to change”. They carry on that “Organizational leaders face one overriding challenge today: how to learn quickly and continuously enough to cope with turbulent and rapidly changing times.” Malhotra (1996) as cited in Lassey (1998:7), also points out that the learning organization as one with “… an ingrained philosophy to change, complexity and uncertainty”. This is further explained by Marquardt (1996), which he describes as the operating environment of organizations, their products, and many other aspects of business change depending on various factors such as technological advancements, competition, and government policy as well as consumer preferences among other drivers of change. Similarly, Tight (1998) advocates organizational learning in the learning organisation allows employees to understand issues better and visualize operations in a different perspective, especially when there are changes in the working procedures due to technological advancement. Failure to cope with the changes leads to the decline of the organisation. As Revan (1998), cited in Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 12), indicates that: “… learning in the organization must be equal to or greater than the rate of environmental change. If the learning rate inside is less than the rate of external change, then the organization is declining or dying. With all organizations facing rapid and unpredictable changes, this truth has become increasingly obvious; as change accelerates so ‘organizational death’ comes in many guises through failure, acquisition, and merger”. Pedler and Aspinwall (1998: 8) also share the same believe by demonstrating an example of the public services, which they will be changed by the means of privatisation, outsourcing, etc. if they don’t change themselves. In order for an organization to maintain its competitive advantages and continuous growth and development, Pedler (1995: 23) argues that, “all companies which continue in business must, at a minimum, have learned enough to survive.” Companies acquire knowledge regarding the new developments in production and management of operations, which are important in avoiding the use of approaches that are obsolete. Furthermore, Braham (1995) suggests organizational learning is a significant aspect of companies that helps in maintaining competitiveness in of the employees as well as organizational productivity. In order to measure whether the company is a learning organisation, it is necessary to identify the key characteristics and features of a learning organisation. Senge (1990) indicates the five disciplines which he emphasizes organisation learning corresponding to business thinking. He also suggests all individuals should practice these disciplines. The five disciplines include: Personal Mastery – Senge (1990: 7) defines this discipline as “… the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and seeing of reality objectively”. He also highlights that the discipline of personal mastery focuses on individuals who are enthusiastic about learning in their field of specialisation. As such, people are able to consistently maintain their momentum at a higher level. Mental Models – Senge (1990: 8) states that mental models “are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalisations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action”. All individuals have their own perceptions due to the differences of mental models. By practising the discipline with metals models, Senge (1990: 9) points out that it helps people to “expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to influence of others”. Building Shared Vision – Senge (1990) describes this as a shared picture of the future that to foster genuine commitment. The shared vision is usually developed from individual visions He further explains that people want to excel and learn due to the existence of such genuine vision instead of they are being told to do so; Team learning – Senge (1990: 10) says that “When teams are truly learning, not only are they producing extraordinary results but the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise”. Team learning is the practice whereby organizations combine individual learning in order to enhance learning among the employees. Senge (1990) observes that Team learning is far more important than individual learning because it allows people to find solutions to problems through sharing ideas and helping each other to develop in terms of knowledge. He also recognises that an organisation cannot learn in the absence of a learning team. Systems Thinking – Senge (1990: 7) defines systems thinking as “a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, and help us see how to change them effectively”. He highlights that all events are connected together within the same pattern which they should been seen as a whole. Senge (1990) further points out that the root cause of problems cannot be resolved if people are focus only on the isolated parts of the systems. Senge (1990) emphasizes that the learning organization is characterized by the practice whereby people focus on developing their capacity to generate the desired outcome. In so doing, they tend to nature innovative and outgoing thinking patterns. There is collective ambition among the people, and they tend to learn as a group. This means that the members of an organization learn as a team. Under such kind of learning, employees within an organization are able to share ideas and generate solutions as a group. An organization tends to acquire the ability to cope with the disabilities of learning through this approach. Senge further observes that learning organizations are those that engage in adaptive learning. When this kind of learning is combined with generative learning, he argues that the capacity of the people to create innovative ideas increases. Senge’s characteristics have a similarity with those of Pedler et al (1997) in the sense that all members of an organization are involved in important organization matters as a group for example in policy making. This means that ideas are generated as a group, whereby each member has an opportunity to contribute. Both share the common idea that information exchange is encouraged amongst employees, especially as Pedler et al (1997) observes, through interdepartmental exchange of information. Similarly, Senge (1990) observes that through the characteristic of system thinking whereby there is the notion that an organization is a single unit whose components can not be separated. Departments therefore work together as the major components of an organization. Both share the view that information technology is used by learning organizations to provide information to the members in order to facilitate learning. They also have the view that managers facilitate learning through creating a favourable environment for learning, as well as self development, which is also a view held by Pearn et al (1995). Certain systems are used in the development of a learning setting in the workplace, such as pilots as well as experimentation. This is an aspect of learning organization generally understood by all three authors. Argyris and Schon (1996), cited in Pedler et al (1997), have a different view of a learning organization. They observe that double and single loop learning are characteristics of a learning organization. Double loop learning in their view, arises when organizations identify an error that creates the necessity for a change in the learning system. Single loop learning on the other hand occurs when it is identified that the goals and structures are not being accomplished effectively. A learning organization makes the necessary adjustments to ensure that the methods to achieve them are efficient. It identifies the beliefs and theories that are undesirable and gets rid of them. In contrast to the views of Senge (1990) which mainly focus on team learning within the organization, Pedler et al (1997) extend the view of organizational learning beyond the boundaries of a particular organization to incorporate inter-company learning. In this case, an organization establishes relations with other organizations to form alliances to facilitate learning. Environmental scanning by members of an organization is a characteristic that Pedler et al view as an important aspect of a learning organization through which it acquires information from outside its boundaries. This characteristic is not emphasized in Senge’s point of view of a learning organization. To summarise, becoming a learning organisation is significant for the accomplishment of the overall goal. It helps in generating innovativeness in the organization, which is significant in enhancing competitiveness. Learning organizations are capable in the maintenance of continuous growth and performance. They are also capable of coping with the rapidly changing operating environment, as well as to achieve excellence. These are important in maintenance of competitiveness (Pedler 1995). It also allows an organization to remain focused on customer satisfaction as well as to satisfy to stakeholders. In the absence of learning, an organization may never acquire these benefits. Rather, Pedler and Aspinwall (1998) say that it gets exposed to risks that can lead to losses due to external pressures. Read More