Topic 4 – Overview

Technological Change and the role of Learning

Topic’s Learning Objectives

Introduction
.
The changes in technology play a critical role in the operation of corporations. Even the best
plans can go wrong as a result of unexpected technological influences, and the failure to
anticipate this factor can be the undoing of an otherwise successful business venture. As we
discussed in previous topics and modules, the environment is not a one-dimensional, single or
fixed domain. Therefore, the business executive or manager has to be aware of technological,
factors on a variety of levels. Topic 4 turns to one more critical factor affecting an
organization’s structure and leader’s responsiveness, namely: technology. We examine some
important changes and influences technology has on organizational design. At the same time,
we present and discuss two very important and contemporary concepts, namely, 1.
Knowledge Management and 2. Learning Organisations. Learning is not unrelated to change.
On the contrary, every corporate change attempt should depart from and involve learning.

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 Main Analysis

Broadly, technology can be viewed as the methods, processes, systems, and skills ised to
transform resources (inputs) into products (outputs). Technological change involves any
periodic or systematic application of scientific knowledge to a new product, process, or
service. All value activities have a ‘technology’, even if it is just know-how. Technologies
may be concerned directly with a product (for example, R&D, product design) or with
processes (for example, process development) or with a particular resource (for example, raw
materials improvements). Let us start with an analysis about the change and influence
brought to organizations by the internet.

The Internet

The Internet’s impact on globalization is only one of the ways that technology is vitally
important in the business world. According to Bateman and Snell (2013), technology both
complicates things and creates new opportunities. The challenges come from the rapid rate at
which communication, transportation, information, and other technological changes. For
example, after just a couple of decades of widespread desktop use, customers switched to
laptop models, which require different accessories. Any company that serves desktop users
had to rethink its customers’ wants and needs, not to mention the possibility that these
customers are now working at the airport or a local Starbucks outlet, rather than in an office.
The internet is a marketplace (EBay is the biggest marketplace in the world – AMAZON is
the second), a means for manufacturing goods and services, a distribution channel, an
information service and many more. It drives down costs and speeds up globalisation. It
improves efficiency of decision making. Managers and leaders can watch and learn what
local competitors and other companies are doing ont he other side of the world. It facilitates
design of new products, from pharmaceuticals to post office and parcel services.

For example, think of the the parcel, mail and logistics companies.

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The British Royal Mail for instance, is responsible for universal mail collection and delivery
the last 500 years! Letters are deposited in a pillar or wall box, taken to a post office, or
collected in bulk from businesses. Deliveries are made at least once every day except
Sundays and Bank Holidays at uniform charges for all British destinations. First Class
deliveries are generally made the next business day throughout the nation.

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Today, however, with the introduction of technology, the Royal Mail offers a logistics
system, enabling you to access the net and track and trace your parcel.

However, technological change brings not only opportunities for leaders but also threats.
Things are changing at breakneck speed. If he/she wants to accommodate the pace of
technological change, a leader must be alerted and become a delicate agent of change. One of
the ways to handle and bring change in the organisation is ‘Knowledge Management’.

Knowledge Management
Companies and managers need good new ideas. Because companies in advanced economies
have become so efficient at producing physical goods, most workers have been freed up to
provide services ot ‘abstract goods’ such as software, entertainment, data, and advertising.
Efficient factories with fewer workers produce the cereals and cell phones the market
demands; meanwhile, more and more workers create software and invent new goods and
services. These workers, whose primary contributions are ideas and problems-solving
expertise, are often referred to as ‘knowledge workers’. Managing these workers poses some
particular challenges. For example, determining whether they are doing a good job can be
difficult because the manager cannot simply count or measure a knowledge worker’s output.
Also, these workers often are most motivated to do their best when the work is interesting,
not because of a carrot or stick dangled by the manager.

Moreover, because the success of modern organisations so often depends on the knowledge
used for innovation and the delivery of services, organisations need to manage that
knowledge. Knowledge management is the set of practices aimed at discovering and
harnessing an organisation’s intellectual resources – fully utilising the intellects of the
organization’s people. Through Knowledge Management, corporate change becomes more
systematic, organised and comprehensive. More specifically:

Knowledge Management is about finding, unlocking, sharing, and altogether capitalizing

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 Knowledge managers find these human assets, help people collaborate and learn, help people
generate new ideas, and harness those ideas into successful innovations. Think for instance of
hospitals. In hospitals, important knowledge includes patients’ histories, doctors’ orders,
billing information, dietary requirements, prescriptions administered, and much more. With
lives at stake, many hospitals have embraced knowledge management. For example, at
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health System, a single information system lets
doctors write prescriptions, look up patient information and lab results, and consult with one
another. Billing is also automated as part of VCU’s knowledge management system, making
the process more efficient and connecting with patients’ data so that it can remind the
physician of all the conditions being treated and billed for. Hospitals can also give patients
access to the knowledge management system so that they can schedule appointments, request
prescription refills, and send questions to their doctors.

Knowledge Management and Corporate Change, moreover, is not unrelated from the concept
of ‘Learning Organisations’. Within this framework, a learning organization is one that
acquires knowledge and innovates fast enough to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing
environment. The following part discusses corporate change in relation to Learning.

Think Theory....
How may your organisation use the ‘knowledge
management’ concept?

Write 200 words explaining how your organisation may use

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 Learning Organization
As we said earlier, because the success of modern businesses so often depends on the
knowledge used for innovation and the delivery of services, organisations need to manage
that knowledge (Bateman and Snell, 2013). Be responsive to change, however, requires
continually changing and learning new ways to act. Some experts have stated that the only
sustainable advantage is learning faster than the competition. This has led to a new term that
is now part of the vocabulary of most managers: ‘the learning organisation’. A learning
organisation is an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge,
and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights (Cohen, 2010:225).
Also, learning organizations create a culture that encourages and supports continuous
employee learning, critical thinking, and risk taking with new ideas, allow mistakes, and
value employee contributions, learn from experience and experiment, and disseminate the
new knowledge throughout the organization for incorporation into day-to-day activities. But
becoming a learning organisation is just another change. How do you plan and implement
just another change in the organisation? How to change the culture, people, technology and
processes of your organisation towards becoming a learning organisation?

The popular business Magazine ‘Forbes’ suggests five ‘keys’ in building a learning
organisation (online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2012/01/18/5-keys-to-
building-a-learning-organization/, 28/02/213):

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1. Remember that corporate learning is “informal” and HR doesn’t own it

If you ask any business leader “how people learn,” their most common answer is “on the
job.” And this is correct – sales people learn by making sales calls, engineers learn by doing
design, customer service people learn by solving problems. The key to success then is not to
provide a lot of formal training, but rather create an environment that supports rapid on-the-
job learning.

Our research shows that companies which adopt “formalized informal learning” programs
(like coaching, on-demand training, and performance support tools) outperform those that
focus on formal training by 3 to 1. In these companies the corporate training team doesn’t just
train people, it puts in place content and programs to help employees quickly learn on the job.
This means developing training in small, easy-to-use chunks of content and making it easy to
find as needed.

2. Promote and reward expertise

Today’s workforce is more specialized than ever. Your most talented people in sales,
manufacturing, engineering, and design are not in management – they are doing their jobs.
High-impact learning organizations unleash these experts and put in place programs to
promote and reward even greater levels of expertise.

You should also reward such expertise. Give engineers career progression in their discipline;
give people time to study and improve their own skills; publicize and promote the success of
experts. Such programs tell the organization that “expertise matters” and “we are willing to
invest in your own skills.”

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For example, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland gives its bank examiners a 7-year
apprenticeship program to help them develop into senior bank examiners. During this period
of time they are continuously trained through apprenticeship and presenting the results of
their work to more senior practitioners.

3. Unleash the power of experts

Since you know these experts are there, let them share information and make them available
to others. Do you have an internal directory of experts which enables them to promote their
own skills and experience? Easy to build and something every company should have.
And remember that experts are everywhere, so let people share what they’ve learned easily.

A great example of such knowledge sharing is the Cheesecake Factory’s video learning
portal.

The head of corporate training for this fast-growing food chain put in place a YouTube-like
learning portal which lets any employee upload a video of themselves doing their job well.

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Employees can share “how to make a hamburger” or “how to best clean the floor” and share
it in any way they wish. Within only a few weeks of building this system people rapidly
started using their cell phones to create instructional videos and share hilarious stories about
how they solve problems on the job. The system went viral in a few weeks.

4. Demonstrate the value of formal training

Formal training has not gone away, and it still plays a huge role in career development and
professional networking. If you have lots of formal training available, managers should be
incented to promote such opportunities and help people make time to learn. Yes, it might take
them away from their jobs for a few days, but ultimately the return is much greater
productivity and satisfaction.

As one high-performing healthcare executive put it: “We are paying our managers to develop
people for the entire organization. If I find them hoarding talent or preventing people from
improving their own skills, they won’t be in management any longer.”

5. Allow people to make mistakes

The best organizational learning (and individual learning) occurs right after you make a huge
mistake. These are the most important learning opportunities your company has.
Take a lesson from the military, the largest learning organization on the planet (they only do
two things: fight and train – and most of the time it’s the latter). Whenever a maneuver is
completed, there is always an “after-action review.” This is a formal process which forces the
team to socialize what worked, what didn’t, and what processes will be changed to improve
the outcome next time.

What happens in your organization when someone fails or makes a mistake? Do you punish
the participants? Or do you take the time to diagnose what happened and put formal programs
in place to improve? One of the tenets of six-sigma is continuous improvement – and the
foundation of continuous improvement is a culture of “learning from mistakes.”
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Also, from a similar point of view, Bateman and Snell (2013:323) suggest some more
important ingredients in becoming a true learning organisation as follows:
1. Their people engage in disciplined thinking and attention to details, making decisions
based on data and evidence rather than guesswork and assumptions.
2. They search constantly for new knowledge and ways to apply it. The organisation
values and rewards individuals who expand their knowledge and skill in areas that
benefit the organisation.
3. They carefully review the successes and failures, looking for lessons and deeper
understanding
4. Learning organisations benchmark - they identify and implement the best business
practices of other organisations, stealing ideas shamelessly.
5. They share ideas throughout the organisation via reports, information systems,
informal discussions, site visits, education, and training. Employees work with and
are mentored by more experienced employees.

To conclude, there are lots of ways to build a learning organization, and they all get back to
management. If you build a culture which gives people time to reflect, develop and share
expertise, stay close to customers, and learn from mistakes you will outdistance your
competition and thrive in the face of huge market change. Take a lesson from companies like
Apple, IBM, and Google: build expertise and promote organizational learning, it will pay off
big time.

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