Learning Organization Paper
MGT/426
Learning Organization Paper
Within the global business environment one thing is constant and inevitable, the need for change and the effort and focus that it requires. The need for change can be attributed to various factors; two that immediately come to mind are globalization and advancements in technology.
The process of implementing change can be cumbersome and difficult at times, and need to follow some type of planning. Effective planning needs to include devising strategies on change implementation. Sometimes change requires management to come up with methods or solutions that are completely different from those developed and used in the past.
Management personnel must realize that there is not any one approach that works for everyone or every situation. Regardless of approach chosen, it is important to make sure that employees are aware of what is required of them and that their involvement is essential to organizational change success. Teams consisting of employees and management need to communicate and interact to adapt to and overcome obstacles that can hinder or sabotage the change process. A collective learning environment in which employees and managers can work together is beneficial to identify process errors or flaws that can present themselves during change implementation.
Learning Organizations defined
There are many interpretations as to what defines a learning organization. But taking the sage
To successfully implement change, employees need to understand how this will benefit them and impact their daily work. One of the things is that something might look good on paper can have drawbacks that are not realized by the planners, but can be easily identified by the employees who must implement the change. Therefore as a manager you need to bring the idea to the employees and get their feedback and continue to empower the employees to make the change that will work for them. Since change doesn’t happen overnight a manager needs to continually in monitoring the process and to assist the
When organisations want to implement change they need to have a plan, taking into consideration existing information that leads to the change, stakeholders views have to be followed for successful implementation, the public views is important, service user’s expectations have to be met by appointing a service team.
The primary two reasons for having an assessment of implementing change is to have proper data and analysis so that the change can grow from an idea to a proper implemented procedure. The different sources of data that are collected will be useless until they are properly analyzed with respect to projected changes. Therefore, it is important to focus on data collection, analyzing, and summarizing to form a proper decision on changes that are appropriate. A properly analyzed and planned implementation of change will be strong against any resistance, identify areas where there might be potential problems, and will help develop strategies to begin the process of identifying
According to Sullivan and Decker there is a ten-step process to implement change (Sullivan & Decker, 2009). In the first three steps the manager must
Managers need to determine the best method of communicating the changes to the employees that are directly affected. This material presented in last weeks class and in the course material helped us understand how important communication is when implementing changes in a work environment. The course book identified four main approaches to managing change in an organization. Lewins’ Three-Step Model argued that successful change in an organization follows three steps: Unfreezing the status quo, movement to a desired end state, and refreezing the new change to make it permanent. (Robbins & Judge, 2011). This approach requires manages to evaluate the need for change and implement a plan of action to help the organization manage changes effectively.
Not only were the leaders impressed by the employees insights, they took action to address all of the problems. As a result, participation increased, communication improved, relationship between employees and management improved, and access to training and development opportunities were wide-spread. But most importantly, once the original change initiatives were introduced, employees embraced the initiatives, offered insights on how to improve their outcomes, and ensured their success.
This last question opens a new chapter in implementation of change for the manager and organization. Many times change is difficult because the change will affect various units of the organization and how they impact other units. For example to implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system will change the structure of the technology department, which in turn changes the structure of the entire organization. Management will need to access all the needs the organization will have such as new equipment, new staff, new policies, etc.
Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.
Introducing organisational change is often hard, the main reasons for that can be variation in perceptions of the employees, fear of disruption or failure and underlining the right approach to apply change. Then even if the change in a specific organisation is projected successfully there is still lot to be done to manage it in an appropriate way (Oakland, 2007).
Throughout our final semester of study at Maryville, our cohort has studied Peter Senge’s, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Rather than set of management practices, the book describes how organizations, especially those that are sustainably competitive, know how to learn. These “learning organizations” are continuously learning how to work together, where the norm is producing their best. In the book, Senge identifies five essential elements, that when practiced together, create perfect conditions for an effective learning organization. These five practices are Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Shared Vision,
Change management is guiding teams, individuals or an organization through a series of changes to move from the current state to the desired state. During this transition, the goal is to empower the people involved to embrace the changes and the process (Bassey, Solomon, and Omono, 2014). Management of change significantly contributes to its success. Change can be influenced by both internal and external elements. It can appear in different ways including a change of management, policies, organizational structure, objectives, business climate, employees and operational location. Whatever the reason behind the change, the aim of change management is to ensure it does not have an adverse impact on the organization or its
1.1 Change management is described by Armstrong (1) as “the process of achieving the smooth implementation of change by planning and introducing it systematically taking into account the likelihood of it being resisted”. Change, the fundamental constant in any successful organisation, can be adaptive, reconstructive, revolutionary or evolutionary and can happen for a number of diverse reasons:
The concept of "change management" is a familiar one in most businesses today. But, how businesses manage change (and how successful they are at it) varies enormously depending on the nature of the business, the change and the people involved. And a key part of this depends on how far people within it understand the change process.
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
Peter Senge is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of the widely-acclaimed book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990). He can be said to be responsible for the popularity of the concept of a ‘learning organization’ today.