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The Success of Learning Organisations Is Predicated on Particular Internal Organisational Relationships and Particular Relationships Between the Organisation and Its Environment. Discuss.

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The success of learning organisations is predicated on particular internal organisational relationships and particular relationships between the organisation and its environment. Discuss.

The only long term sustained competitive advantage for an organisation came from the ability of its people to learn faster than those in other organisations and to change the nature of the organisation to match the changes in the environment. For an organisation to be considered to be learning, it must contain certain characteristics and operate in certain environment to do so. How the organisation learns will depend on the interaction between individuals within the organisation and the interaction between the organisation and its external …show more content…

Open two-way communication is encouraged; this will create a climate for learning where learning is facilitated both mentally, by encouraging experimentation and allow mistakes. Open-planned physical space is desired, because this will help to create an environment which encourages more interaction between employees and the effect of hierarchy will also be minimised. For an organisation to have learning characteristics, it’ll have to rely on the functioning of internal organisational relationships and how the organisation interacts with its external environment. Internal organisational relationships have a big impact on how an organisation can transform into a learning organisation. Most organisations in today’s society tend to be more modernist in terms of its social structure. They make use of the hierarchical structure, the high level of formalization, centralized decision-making and vertical communication in the form of instructions. This type of mechanistic structure produces predictability and accountability, but it restrains the level of flexibility, adaptability and the innovation of the organisations. For an organisation to have learning characteristics, an organic social structure is favoured over the mechanistic social structure. Organic forms, characterised as informal, decentralised and requiring high degree of coordination across departments, are more likely to be innovative and to grant greater discretion to employees

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