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Learning Organization

There are several barriers that can stall or reverse an organization's progress towards becoming a learning organization. These include challenges in embracing concepts like personal mastery, a lack of a learning culture where knowledge sharing is encouraged, and difficulty transitioning away from traditional hierarchical structures. Additionally, the level of sophisticated thinking required of managers may be beyond what is feasible in practice. Transforming an organization fully is difficult and requires dedicating sufficient time, appropriate training, and potentially external help to guide the process of change.

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Nancy Khural
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117 views2 pages

Learning Organization

There are several barriers that can stall or reverse an organization's progress towards becoming a learning organization. These include challenges in embracing concepts like personal mastery, a lack of a learning culture where knowledge sharing is encouraged, and difficulty transitioning away from traditional hierarchical structures. Additionally, the level of sophisticated thinking required of managers may be beyond what is feasible in practice. Transforming an organization fully is difficult and requires dedicating sufficient time, appropriate training, and potentially external help to guide the process of change.

Uploaded by

Nancy Khural
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms

itself. [1] Learning organizations develop as a result of the pressures facing modern organizations and enables them to remain competitive in the business environment.[2] A learning organization has five main features; systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning. [3] Development Organizations do not organically develop into learning organizations; there are factors prompting their change. As organizations grow, they lose their capacity to learn as company structures and individual thinking becomes rigid.[1] When problems arise, the proposed solutions often turn out to be only short term (single loop learning) and re-emerge in the future. [3] To remain competitive, many organizations have restructured, with fewer people in the company. [1] This means those who remain need to work more effectively.[2]

Characterstics
There is a multitude of definitions of a learning organization as well as their typologies. According to Peter Senge, a learning organization exhibits five main characteristics: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, a shared vision, and team learning. [3] Systems thinking. The idea of the learning organization developed from a body of work called systems thinking.[7] This is a conceptual framework that allows people to study businesses as bounded objects.[3] Learning organizations use this method of thinking when assessing their company and have information systems that measure the performance of the organization as a whole and of its various components.[7] Personal mastery. The commitment by an individual to the process of learning is known as personal mastery.[3] There is a competitive advantage for an organization whose workforce can learn more quickly than the workforce of other organizations. [8] Individual learning is acquired through staff training and development, [9] however learning cannot be forced upon an individual who is not receptive to learning.[3] Mental models. The assumptions held by individuals and organizations are called mental models.[3] To become a learning organization, these models must be challenged. Individuals tend to espouse theories, which are what they intend to follow, and theories-in-use, which are what they actually do.[3][7] Similarly, organizations tend to have memories which preserve certain behaviours, norms and values.[10] In creating a learning environment it is important to replace confrontational attitudes with an open culture[9 Shared vision. The development of a shared vision is important in motivating the staff to learn, as it creates a common identity that provides focus and energy for learning. [3] The most successful visions build on the individual visions of the employees at all levels of the organization, [9] thus the creation of a shared vision can be hindered by traditional structures where the company vision is imposed from above.[2] Team learning. The accumulation of individual learning constitutes Team learning.[2] The benefit of team or shared learning is that staff grow more quickly [2] and the problem solving capacity of the organization is improved through better access to knowledge and expertise. [9] Learning organizations have structures that facilitate team learning with features such as boundary crossing and openness.[7] Team learning requires individuals to engage in dialogue and discussion;[2] therefore team members must develop open communication, shared meaning, and shared understanding.[2 benefits Maintaining levels of innovation and remaining competitive [9] Being better placed to respond to external pressures [9] Having the knowledge to better link resources to customer needs [1] Improving quality of outputs at all levels[1]

Improving Corporate image by becoming more people oriented[1] Increasing the pace of change within the organization [1]

Barriers
Even within or without learning organization, problems can stall the process of learning or cause it to regress. Most of them arise from an organization not fully embracing all the necessary facets. Once these problems can be identified, work can begin on improving them.Some organizations find it hard to embrace personal mastery because as a concept it is intangible and the benefits cannot be quantified;,[3] personal mastery can even be seen as a threat to the organisation. This threat can be real, as Senge[3] points out, that to empower people in an unaligned organisation can be counterproductive. In other words, if individuals do not engage with a shared vision, personal mastery could be used to advance their own personal visions. In some organisations a lack of a learning culture can be a barrier to learning. An environment must be created where individuals can share learning without it being devalued and ignored, so more people can benefit from their knowledge and the individuals becomes empowered. [2] A learning organization needs to fully accept the removal of traditional hierarchical structures.[2] Some problems and issues In our discussion of Senge and the learning organization we point to some particular problems associated with his conceptualization. These include a failure to fully appreciate and incorporate the imperatives that animate modern organizations; the relative sophistication of the thinking he requires of managers (and whether many in practice they are up to it); and questions around his treatment of organizational politics. It is certainly difficult to find real-life examples of learning organizations (Kerka 1995). There has also been a lack of critical analysis of the theoretical framework.

Challenges in the transformation to a Learning Organization


The book The Dance of Change states there are many reasons why an organization may have trouble in transforming itself into a learning organization. The first is that an organization does not have enough time.[14] Employees and management may have other issues that take priority over trying to change the culture of their organization. The team may not be able to commit the time an institution does not have the appropriate help or training. For an organization to be able to change, it needs to know the steps necessary to solve the problems it faces. As a solution, a mentor or coach who is well versed in the learning organization concept may be necessary. computer computer

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