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Learning Organization

An organization needs to continuously learn and adapt in order to survive in a changing environment. A learning organization has five main characteristics: 1) systems thinking, viewing the organization holistically rather than as individual parts, 2) personal mastery, where individuals continuously improve their skills and knowledge, 3) questioning mental models and unlearning outdated assumptions, 4) developing a shared organizational vision, and 5) facilitating team learning so that knowledge is shared across the organization. When all five characteristics are present, the organization can learn quickly and make effective decisions to achieve its goals.

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Abdullah Aziz
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127 views4 pages

Learning Organization

An organization needs to continuously learn and adapt in order to survive in a changing environment. A learning organization has five main characteristics: 1) systems thinking, viewing the organization holistically rather than as individual parts, 2) personal mastery, where individuals continuously improve their skills and knowledge, 3) questioning mental models and unlearning outdated assumptions, 4) developing a shared organizational vision, and 5) facilitating team learning so that knowledge is shared across the organization. When all five characteristics are present, the organization can learn quickly and make effective decisions to achieve its goals.

Uploaded by

Abdullah Aziz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Characteristics of Learning Organization:

An organization needs to learn to survive and prosper in changing and uncertain


environment. It needs its managers to make right decisions through skill and sound
judgment. Successful decision-making requires the organization to improve its
capability of learning new behaviors over a period of time. This learning in the
organization is a fighting process in the face of swift pace of change. In this battle
managers are responsible for increasing the awareness and the ability of the
organizational employees to comprehend and manage the organization and its
environment. In this way they can make decisions that continuously secure the
organization to reach its goals.
Individuals and groups learn, and when conditions and systems are well designed.
In a learning organization, their learning can be shared across the organization and
incorporated into its practices, beliefs, policies, structure and culture.
1: Systems thinking.
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 as
bounded objects. Learning organization uses this method of thinking when assessing
the organization and has 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 are missing, then the
organization falls short of its goal. However, some believes that the characteristics
of a learning organization are factors that are gradually acquired, rather than
developed simultaneously. Systems – thinking is the conceptual cornerstone of a
learning organization. It is the discipline that integrates all the employees of the
organization, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice. Systems
thinking ability to comprehend and address the whole and to examine the
interrelationship between the parts provides for both the incentive and the means to
integrate various disciplines in the organization.
2: Personal mastery.
Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not
guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs.
Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening
employee’s personal vision, of focusing their energies, of developing patience, and
of seeing reality objectively. It goes beyond competence and skills, although it
involves them.
The commitment by an individual to the process of learning is known as personal
mastery. There is a competitive advantage for the organization over other
competition organizations if the employees of the organization can learn more
quickly. Individual learning is acquired through employee’s training, development
and continuous self-improvement, 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 in the organization 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.
3: Mental 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, organizations tend to have ‘memories’ which
preserve certain behaviors, norms and values. In creating a learning environment, it
is important to replace confrontational attitudes 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 by the process called ‘unlearning’.
4: Building shared vision.
The development of a shared vision is important in motivating the employees to
learn, as it creates a common identity that provides focus and energy for
learning. The most successful visions normally build on the individual visions of the
employees at all levels of the organization. The creation of a shared vision can be
hindered by traditional structures where the organizational vision is imposed from
above. Therefore, a learning organization tends to have flat, decentralized
organizational structure. The shared vision is often to succeed against a competitor
for which there can be transitory goals. However, there should also be long term
goals that are intrinsic within the organization.
5: Team learning.
The accumulation of individual learning constitutes team learning. The benefit of
team or shared learning is that the employees grow more quickly and the problem
solving capacity of the organization is improved through better access to knowledge
and expertise. A learning organization has 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. A
learning organization typically has excellent knowledge management structures,
allowing creation, acquisition, dissemination, and implementation of this knowledge
in the organization.
Team learning is viewed as ‘the process of aligning and developing the capacities of
a team to create the results its members truly desire. It builds on personal mastery
and shared vision – but these are not enough. Employees need to be able to act
together. When teams learn together then not only there are good results for the
organization but the team members also grow more rapidly which could not have
happened otherwise.

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