Learning Organizations: The Noncommissioned Officer Education System

According to Gephart and Marsick (1996, p. 34) states that, “A learning organization is an organization that has an enhanced capacity to learn, adapt, and change. It 's an organization in which learning processes are analyzed, monitored, developed, managed, and aligned with improvement and innovation goals.” I would classify my organization as a learning organization. They invest in our learning, development, and advancement. Within our organization, they ensure that we are capable of doing and performing our job. They bring forth training opportunities, workshops, and classes that facilitate our capability to do our jobs effectively and efficiently. During our work retreats, we gain lessons that equip us to handle the day to day duties we need to get our job done and further the growth of the organization. Nonetheless, my organization is very concerned about obtaining excellence and success for its employees and they promote that at all costs. Learning organizations are classified as very essential and important aspects of a business. They make certain that you have the needed and necessary abilities to sustain your organization and job duties (Bethel University, n.d.).

Learning can be defined as the acquisition of adequate knowledge and proficiency by studying or gaining experience or to become acquainted with something by observing it or by collecting information about it through different resources. The word organization is, however, derived from the word ‘organism’, where distinctive functions depend on each other. Whilst, an organization that is going through the process of learning and development reinforces and encourages its employees to learn new skills and expertise from the tasks they perform on a regular basis. Such organizations provide

In the recent past, many organizations and consultants have continued to recognize the commercial importance of organizational learning, which has contributed to the more consideration of the concept of learning organization. Since learning organization has become a central orienting point to organizational learning, several writers have attempted to identify templates, or ideal forms for real organizations to emulate. Actually, organizational learning is basically considered as the process or activity in which organizations ultimately reach the model of a learning organization (Smith, 2001). Consequently, learning organization is a model with which organizations have to evolve to respond to the several pressures they experience. This model enables organizations to respond to pressures because it's characterized by recognition of the importance of individual and collective learning.

EADERS MAY THINK that getting their organizations to learn is only a matter of articulating a clear vision, giving employees the right incentives, and providing lots of training. This assumption is not merely flawed – it’s risky in the face of intensifying competition, advances in technology, and shifts in customer preferences. Organizations need to learn more than ever as they confront these mounting forces. Each company must become a learning

The article provides ways to build a learning organization, and they all lead back to the organizations management, building a culture giving individuals the time to develop, reflect, share expertise and experiences, and learning from mistakes can help the organization surpass the competition, and thrive and survive the current changing environment.

4. The main findings of this article are to do with the learning processes implemented by the managers and how to become better learning organizations. They found that there are many approaches that must be applied to the corresponding qualities of each department or person’s most effective learning method. They found that taking the learning organization test will help organizations to compare their performance against other organizations, and to recognize where there downfalls lay and use this information

In a Learning Organization, change is seen as an opportunity to learn through problem solving. Shifting Focus; many agencies are changing their focus from a role of ensuring compliance to one of serving customers. A Learning Organization can ensure that there is a strategic alignment between customer needs, organizational goals, individual learning, and resource allocations. Eroding Knowledge Bases; the recent attrition of employees; reductions-in-force, and expected retirements are eroding the organizational knowledge bases. A Learning Organization fosters information exchange and captures expertise from all levels of personnel. Limited Training Resources; employee training budgets are shrinking while staff members have less time to attend formal training sessions. A Learning Organization can make use of alternative strategies that integrate learning into the workplace. These alternative methods cost less and are effective. Evolving Roles of Supervisors; Supervisors are assuming increasing responsibility for traditional human resource functions. In a Learning Organization, managers serve as teachers and each individual is empowered to be responsible for his or her own learning.

Most fully the concept of learning organization can be opened with a set of characteristics possessed by the organization of this type. Since the learning organization is fundamentally different from the so-called "traditional" organizations, they are compared on a set of several parameters: the characteristics of the employee (creativity, systems thinking, expertise), organizational structure, organizational culture, leadership, empowerment of staff and authority control, communication, attitude to the conflict, group work, corporate training. It is important to give these features in details for deeper understanding of the concept “learning organization”:

It 's essential to distinguish between “learning group” and “organizational learning”, they deem that these ideas must no longer be regarded as they 're identical (Graham & Nafukho, 2007). A learning organization is involved in making a metamorphosis in behavior in an effort to behavior the company to fully grasp its preferred reworking (Blackman & Henderson, 2005). The learning organization (LO) embodies the monitor of the group in a definite structural framework; even as organizational learning (OL) is deemed as a enormous operative software used to encapsulate the training movements within the organization (Garavan, 1997). The two terms are unique but strongly interrelated; organizational learning need to achieve a segment where the switch of learning and sharing of knowledge is simpler (sun & Scott, 2003). Although learning organization is an analysis of how companies learn, the preliminary factor will perpetually be a scrutiny of how contributors learn. In parallel, the organizational learning is deemed a approach to categorical that organizational members are man or woman freshmen who own the potential to be trained jointly. Then, organizational learning is pertained as a knowledge sharing method; additionally, the competitive strategy of the institution that can engender its sustainable competitive advantage (Hoyle, 1995).

Organizational theorists have examined learning for quite a long time. Majority of the researchers view organizational learning as a process, which unfolds over certain period of time, and associate it with acquisition of knowledge and enhanced performance. They, however differ on certain essential issues. For instance, some believe that behavioral change is needed for learning; while others maintain that new ways of thinking are enough (Garvin, 1993). Others refer to information

A learning organization, although similar to organizational learning, differs in the sense that it embodies the characteristics of the latter and modifies itself accordingly. To elaborate, it is a form of an organization that is “skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights” (Garvin, 1993, p.80). Core to this definition is the need for change in the processes and behaviors of the workplace in the interest of enhancing performance. As a result, it is no surprise that the majority of this literature is targeted at practitioners and consultants as opposed to academics (Örtenblad, 2001).

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.

Today, the rapid pace of change that we all experience demands an unparalleled learning response from organizations (Bennett, 1994). Major economic, social and technological pressures from all around the globe have dramatically altered the environment within which organizations must

During these years, there has been an increased trend toward emphasizing on the importance of learning in organizational management, due to the managers were told that the economy has turned into a knowledge economy (Drucker, 1993 cited in Berends et. al, 2003), and that knowledge and learning “are of prime importance for creating and sustaining competitive advantage”(Nonaka, 1994 cited in Berends et. al, 2003). This great change has encouraged organization to not only adapt and acquire knowledge but also to learn how to apply what they learned into practice. Therefore, to develop organizational learning and to be learning organizations become

learning organizations (LO) May also be outlined as businesses where persons continually spread out their capability to fully grasp the outcome they truly want, the place new and wide configurations of considering are developed, the place cooperative ambition is emancipated, and where individuals are constantly finding out to see the entirety collectively. The major groundwork for such firms is that in instances of quick change best these which can be flexible, adaptive and productive will be successful. For this to take position, corporations have got to detect how you can exploit people’s dedication and ability to be trained in any respect stages (Senge,1990).