Topic 7 - Organisational learning + managing change and conflict

Sub-topic 1: Organisational learning

1. What is a learning organisation and its key characteristics? Compare it to the traditional organisation.
2. Using the poster by Jay Cross about informal learning, please discuss the relevance and benefits of fostering this type of learning within organisations. available at: http://elearningargentina.wordpress.com/page/2

It’s a Learning Organization which encourages their employees to learn, the result of the encouragement is that their work force learns a lot of knowledge and experience and which in return, turns the company into a more flexible company, a learning organization has five characteristics:

1. System Thinking: In this methods they asses their company and they measure their performance as a whole and its various components, they study business as bounded objects, the company has to have all the characteristics of a system thinking state for the company to be considered as a learning organization, these characteristics have to be acquired rather than developed at the same time..
2. Mental models: It means that the employee knows what the values that the company considers important are and unimportant in the way the act, they have to keep in mind the good values and forget the unwanted values.
3. Personal Mastery: The Company pushes the employees to learn more and have a personal mastery over certain topics that can help the company of that the employee considers important, to become an expert in a topic, learning cannot be forced but learning can be turned into a company’s culture, that it’s normal to learn something new every day, its also know as the triple loop learning.
4. Team Learning: when there is more access to knowledge and the knowledge is shared between members of the same team, then there is a high possibility that the staff will grow more quickly, they all know the information and know how to act with the information, this will lead to a lot of interactions between team members.
5. Shared Vision: it’s a great way to motivate the workers to learn, it provides a common identity and the energy and focus for learning, the shared vision it’s the objective of all the staff in the company, it can be tu surpass another company in sales or turn the company into a more productive company, an objective in which the company it’s the important part.

A traditional organizational is a company or organization where there is a boundary between workers and managers, unlike the learning organization, the traditional organization does not change and can affect the company in the future, tradition is good, but you have to learn to adapt to changes that are going to happen in the future, they will lose their position to other companies, they will become inefficient in the markets, and they will reject to embrace new ideas and this will stop the company from increasing their productivity.

In order for a company to be successful in the world, the learning organization it’s the best choice for a company to increase and keep improving and preparing for the future.

You can see in the video how a learning company is appearing in new markets and finding new customers to their products, this is the future for a learning company.



As you can see in the image (find the image in http://elearningargentina.wordpress.com/page/2/ ) you can see that in a learning company, when a company embraces the changes in order to adapt, improve and change, the old customs that aren’t needed and slow down the company are left behind, new customs are embraced in order to improve the company, in order to reach the best point for a company to turn into a learning company is to accept the changes and turn into a company that can work in the new markets.


http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning-organization.htm
http://www.ee.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/MENG/MEAB/lo_index.html
http://www.sunrisepage.com/manage/orgstruc.htm