A Method to Achieve the Competitive Advantage with Organizational Learning

The first few pages of the article emphasize on the importance of the meaning, measurement and management of a learning organization. The rest of the article focuses on the main Building blocks that aid an organization to improve and become a learning organization. Garvin gives a lot of examples to elaborately explain his theory on a learning organization. The article also emphasizes on the stages of knowledge, and the half-life curves that can be used to compare between the performances of a company’s divisions.

Many companies are very keen and ready to clinch Work Base Learning in an organization, not mainly because it provide you with lifelong learning, but also it is an important ingredient of what Senge (1990) has termed as the ‘learning organization’. A learning organization is a place in which the learning and flair of persons is backed and promoted so that the organization itself be able to form its future and it also very important to gain competitive advantage.

For most companies, identifying what a learning organization should be and actually becoming one is tricky at best, impossible at worst. One way that manager's and companies can promote the concept of being a learning organization is to assess whether the company is in need of a short-term fix or whether it is more focused on long-term results. Organizational learning is a long-term activity that will build competitive advantage over time and requires sustained management attention, commitment, and effort. Learning organizations maximize their competitive positions during strong economic times and they prudently train their employees and prepare for change even in turbulent times. As a result, learning organizations and learning

Learning at an organization is more of a self-conducted activity, and is a continuous process that lasts the entire cycle of the organization and the tenure of the employee. Nevertheless, each organization must effectively employ certain training and development activities for new as well as seasoned employees in order to accomplish different objectives:-

There have four characteristics in the supportive learning environment: Psychological safety, appreciation of differences, openness to new ideas, and time for reflection. The four steps of learning processes: First, generation. Company need to develop and test new products or services. Second, collection. Company need to collect customers, technological and information about competitors. Third, interpretation. Through rigorous analysis to identify and solve problems. At last, dissemination of information. Company should move information into customers' hand and heads quickly and efficiently. Leadership reinforcing learning means leaders should get some feedback from employees in order to motivating employees ask and discuss problems. The authors use learning organization survey to determine the organizations. After survey, authors conclude four principles about learning organization: "Leadership alone is insufficient" - Leaders need open their minded for questioning, cogitative listening, consider a

This paper, therefore, explores, discusses and analyzes the integrated role of Learning organization (as a structural entity) and the organizational learning (as an intrinsic know-how process) that

Organizational learning is no doubt an important concern to organizational researchers and practitioners. However, few theories or models of organizational learning have widespread acceptance, even the basic concept of what organizational learning is (Fiol & Lyles, 1985; Huber, 1991, Kim, 1993).

Purpose – Through investigating the relationship among human resource management (HRM), organizational learning (OL), organizational innovation (OI), knowledge management capability (KMC), and organizational performance (OP), the aim of this paper was to find a way of improving organizational performance through learning and knowledge. Design/methodology/approach – A survey questionnaire was utilized to collect data. The population of this study included 659

Peter Michael Senge is the founding chairman of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). This organization delivers the services of advises about the communication of ideas between large organizations (as cited in Vliet, V.V., 2013, p.4). He is the author of the bestselling book The Fifth Discipline: ‘The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization’. (1990). Peter Senge theory of learning organizations promote an environment where people are engaged in their work and committed to the vision of the organization. In addition, at the MIT Sloan School of Management, he is a scientist and director in Center for Organizational Learning. Besides, he served as senior lecturer at the System Dynamics Group at MIT Sloan School of Management and co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute. (http://howold.co/peter-senge)

 In today 's fast economy, access to internet gives organizations an immense wealth of knowledge at a click. The ownership of proprietary and unique knowledge is critical to an organization 's ability to maintain advantage over competitors. It is important that organizations maximize ownership of intellectual capital as documented explicit knowledge as much as possible. The development of intellectual capital can be achieved through the codification of existing explicit knowledge into information systems, the personalization of individual tacit knowledge into organizational processes (Hansen et al, 1999) or the continual encouragement of a learning environment within the organization to acquire new knowledge (Pershing, 2006). The substantiating and capitalization on something as abstract and intangible as knowledge is difficult. How does one convert tacit knowledge, a thing that by its very nature cannot be verbalized by an individual, into documented intellectual capital? The answer lies in the various types of collective learning.

A learning organization is one that is able to transform its culture and behaviors from an occurred situation. This includes the organization realizing a repeated pattern of behaviors that is not growing or helping the organization in the right direction. When organizations admit to certain truths or facts and acknowledge flawed behaviors, then change can start. Organizations attempt to change by restructuring and reorganizing the company. Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning but, without it no organizational learning occurs’ (Senge 1990).

Learning Organisations are defined as those in which continuous learning occurs throughout the organisation. The traditional organisational model, ‘the top thinks and the local acts,’ must … give way to integrating thinking and acting at all levels. Creating a learning organisation creates the basis for harnessing the collective genius of the people in the organisation. It is a basis for not only creating an organisation that can not only respond and adapt, but which can also create

Peter Senge argues that not only we humans learn, but organizations also. However, learning itself may not be enough for the organization to survive in this ever-challenging era. In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Senge introduced five ‘disciplines’, namely systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning, that characterizes an organization as a learning organization.

The course contents varied from discussing the learning theories to knowledge transfers to designing learning solutions while identifying and appreciating the individual differences. Today, I will be speaking of organizational learning and development that caters the employees’ learning needs.

A learning organization emphasizes or prioritizes certain characteristics that typical organization does not. These can be divided in five broad categories. Personal mastery; Personal mastery is the commitment by an individual to the process of learning. There is a competitive advantage for an organization whose workforce can learn quicker than the workforce of other organizations. Mental models; these are terms given to ingrained assumptions held by individuals and organizations. Their role is to preserve certain behaviors, norms and values applicable to all employees. Systems thinking; it is a conceptual framework that allows people to study businesses. This method of thinking is employed when assessing a company and will have developed information systems that measure the performance of the organization as a whole and of its various components. Shared vision; it is important in incentivizing the workforce to learn as it creates a common identity that can provide focus and energy for learning. The most successful visions build on the individual visions of the employees at all levels of the organization. Team learning; it is the accumulation of individual learning. The benefit of sharing individual learning is that employees grow more quickly and the problem solving capacity of the organization is improved through