Shaheer Assignment

8/7/2019 Shaheer Assignment

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Learning organization

A learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and

continuously transforms itself. Learning organizations develop as a result of the pressures facing

modern organizations and enables them to remain competitive in the business environment. A

learning organization has five main features; systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models,shared vision and team learning

Benefits

The main benefits are:

Maintaining levels of innovation and remaining competitive .

Being better placed to respond to external pressures

Having the knowledge to better link resources to customer needs

Improving quality of outputs at all levels

Improving corporate image by becoming more people oriented

Increasing the pace of change within the organization

Ch aracteristics

A learning organization exhibits five main characteristics: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental

models, a shared vision, and team learning.

Systems t h inking The idea of the learning organization developed from a body of work

called systems thinking . This is a conceptual framework that allows people to study businesses asbounded objects. 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. Systems thinking states that all the characteristics must be apparent at once in

an organization for it to be a learning organization. If some of these characteristics is missing then the

organization will fall short of its goal. However OKeeffe believes that the characteristics of a learning

organization are factors that are gradually acquired, rather than developed simultaneously.

Personal mastery The commitment by an individual to the process of learning is known as

personal mastery. There is a competitive advantage for an organization whose workforce can learn

quicker than the workforce of other organizations. Individual learning is acquired through staff trainingand development, however learning cannot be forced upon an individual who is not receptive to

learning. Research shows that most learning in the workplace is incidental, rather than the product of

formal training, therefore it is important to develop a culture where personal mastery is practiced in

daily life. A learning organization has been described as the sum of individual learning, but there must

be mechanisms for individual learning to be transferred into organizational learning.


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M ental models The assumptions held by individuals and organizations are called mental

models . 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. Similarly, organisations tend to have memories which preserve certain behaviours,

norms and values. In creating a learning environment it is important to replace confrontationalattitudes with an open culture that promotes inquiry and trust. To achieve this, the learning

organization needs mechanisms for locating and assessing organizational theories of

action. Unwanted values need to be discarded in a process called unlearning. Wang and

Ahmed refer to this as triple loop learning.

S h ared 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. The most successful visions

build on the individual visions of the employees at all levels of the organization, thus the creation of a

shared vision can be hindered by traditional structures where the company vision is imposed from

above. Therefore, learning organizations tend to have flat, decentralized organizationalstructures. The shared vision is often to succeed against a competitor, however Senge states that

these are transitory goals and suggests that there should also be long term goals that are intrinsic

within the company.

Team learning The accumulation of individual learning constitutes Team learning. The benefit of

team or shared learning is that staff grow more quickly and the problem solving capacity of the

organization is improved through better access to knowledge and expertise. Learning organizations

have structures that facilitate team learning with features such as boundary crossing and

openness. Team learning requires individuals to engage in dialogue and discussion therefore team

members must develop open communication, shared meaning, and shared understanding. Learning

organizations typically have excellent knowledge management structures, allowing creation,

acquisition, dissemination, and implementation of this knowledge in the organization

Strategy as a Learning Process

In particular, organizations they find themselves in a competitive environment

Characterized by rapid change. Any competitive edge depends on its ability to deal with

change more effectively and more rapidly than its competitors. It is no longer appropriate

for managers to take all the responsibility for implementing organizational change in

response to rapid and complex changes within the environment. Each individual within the

Organization needs to be accountable and take responsibility for making the necessary

changes within their individual work areas. They also need to share their knowledge with

others in the organization thus emphasizing the notion of teams and teamwork. These are

ideals typical of an organization aspiring to develop a learning organization


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Strategy is an integral part of the learning process for a learning organization because it

focuses on the organizations development of core competencies, both in the present and in

the future. It also focuses the learning process on the desired future position that the

organization would like to be in. Rather than focusing on only one aspect of organizational

change, the company should try to develop a dynamic and iterative process aimed at

providing the organization with a builtin capacity to change and redesign (itself)

continually as the circumstances demand. This has involved transformational change of the

organizational structure, human resource practices, and technology. This means that at all

levels of the organization, employees have been, and are, involved in the processes of

transformation improvement.

The concept of planning as a learning process is emphasized by Arie de Geus. He refers to

the way one of the world's most successful companies, Shell, used the corporate planning

processes as a constructive and significant way to promote learning at the strategic and

operational levels.

The companys vision is central to defining and developing the organization. It is anarticulation of the core competence of the organization. Business strategies should be

strongly driven by its vision and mission. The importance of the vision is strongly

emphasized in team meetings, regular feedback sessions to staff and other types of

communications. The vision and mission should be developed after extensive consultation

with employees, including a competition within the company to find the best mission

statement. There is particular emphasis on the organizations values. These were developed

in conjunction with the Covey 7-Habits Program, and a comprehensive training program in

which more than eighty percent of employees were exposed to the Covey principles. An

Employee OpinionClimate Survey should conducted every eighteen months to determine

the extent to which people buy in to the vision and mission, and to measure whether there

is congruence between organizational values and the beliefs of individual employees.

D ifference between Learning and Traditional Top down Approac h

Learning Organization

A Learning Organization leverages the initiative and innovation of their most valuable asset, the

Employees - It embraces empowerment, creative thinking, calculated risk taking and even theMaverick principle. The traditional organization is in contrast to learning organization and do not

consult the employees and do not engage them in decision making process.

The Learning Organization effectively encourages the concept of asking for forgiveness instead of

asking for permission. Employees continue to strive to increase their personal output and positive

results on the job. The objective is to create an environment that will allow its employees to operate in

levels one and two of the initiative scale.


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A Learning Organization is an organization in which everyone is engaged in identifying and solving

problems, enabling the organization to continuously experiment, improve and increase its capability.

The learning organization approach is based on values such as; passion for learning, communicati on,

collaboration, team building, people value, caring, culture for excellence, change, problem solving and

personal development.

Traditional organization

Traditional organizational structures, often associated with top-down, highly procedural mechanistic

organizations, drove much of the landscape in the early and mid-20th century. Although traditional

structures excel in industries where procedural uniformity equates to quality, they tend to have some

drawbacks in meeting the varied demands of 21st-century.

Low Creativity

Mechanistic organizations, the most common of the traditional structures according to the business

website Reference for Business, feature strictly documented procedures, and managers in theseorganizations expect employees to follow approved processes without deviation. Although this

structure worked well for the industrial sector prolific through much of the 20th century, it discourages

employees from applying the type of creative problem solving required in the post-2000 business

environment. In addition, traditional organizational structures left little room for exploration of

employee ideas, a trademark of highly successful modern businesses like Google and Southwest

Airlines.

Communication Problems

In a traditional organizational structure, employees work under several layers of management.

Communication in these organizations originates at the top, typically with the organization's senior leaders, and flows downward through the company's various layers. Employees at or near the bottom

of one chain of command typically experience difficulty communicating with peers in other work

groups, as the organizational structure nearly prohibits the horizontal flow of communication.

Similarly, employees in such organizations often lack the ability to communicate upward, and this

restriction inhibits the receipt of employee feedback. In more modern organizational structures, by

contrast, work groups commonly communicate with peers throughout the company, and many

organizations encourage employees to express ideas or concerns with senior management.

High Cost

Traditional organizational structures typically feature several layers of management, and managers

often command higher salaries than line-level employees. In addition, business writers at Business

Experts point out that traditional organizations tend to expand the number of management layers as

they grow, and expansion can considerably increase the organization's costs. To control costs,


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modern organizations tend to use flatter, more horizontal organizational structures that reduce the

number of managers and shift head count budgets to maximize the number of line-level employees.

Less Happiness

Traditional structures, and especially highly mechanized organizations, reduce opportunities for

employees to express concerns, provide feedback and generally control their own work environment.

According to Fred Luthans, author of the college textbook "Organizational Behavior," employees who

lack the ability to control their working environment and have low levels of autonomy often experience

less happiness in the workplace than their more empowered counterparts. Luthans also notes that

employees in these environments tend to feel more stress, have a lower quality of work life and reach

burnout more quickly than employees in more modern and less restrictive businesses.

D ifference between t h e Traditional Organization Versus t h e

Learning Organization

Element TraditionalOrganization

Learningorganization

S h ared Values EfficiencyEffectiveness

ExcellenceOrganizational Renewal

M anagement Style Control Facilitator Coach

Strategy/Action Plan Top down approach

Road map

Everyone is consulted

Learning map

Structure Hierarchy Flat structureDynamic networks

Staff Ch aracteristics People who know (experts)People who learn

Knowledge is power Mistakes tolerated as part of learning

D istinctive Staff Skills

Adaptive learning Generative learning

M easurementSystem

Financial measures Both financial and non-financial measures

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