London Met -MBA Blog: People and Organizations-Learning & Development (Lecture 3)

What is a Learning Organization?

The term Learning Organization refers to an organization that constantly monitors its environment for changes, and learns from and adapts to these changes. Senge (1990) said that a Learning organization is a dynamical system that is in a state of continuous adaptation and improvement.

Why "Learning Organization"?

In 1988 Arie de Geus, who led the Shell Oil Company, claimed that the only sustainable competitive advantage is “the ability to learn faster than your competitors”. This supports for an organization to ,

1. Keeping up with the Fourth Industrial Revolution - The Fourth Industrial Revolution is happening right now, with the continuous rise of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, in the fields of physical, digital, and biological systems (cyber-physical systems). This latest industrial revolution is causing things to change so quickly that it’s crucial to embrace continuous learning if companies want to stay ahead of the curve.

2. Becoming an industry authority - Being an industry authority means being agile for trends and updates in the industry or specialty that your business operates in, and having the skill set to effectively communicate this to your subordinates. That is why encouraging learning as a general culture among a workforce is so important.

3. Better people, better business - A learning culture means that a company creates an environment for employees to continuously up-skill, knowledge share and better themselves. As a result, the business improves overall because a learning culture promotes productivity and cross-department support.

Five Components of a "Learning Organization"

Figure 1; Five Disciplines of a learning organization
(Source; Yadav & Agarwal 2016)

Senge (1990) identified five basic disciplines or components of a learning organization as,

1. Personal mastery - Clarifying one's personal vision, focusing energy, and seeing reality

2. Shared vision - Transforming individual vision into a shared vision

3. Mental models - Unearthing internal pictures or models and understanding how they shape actions

4. Team learning - Suspending judgments and creating dialogue

5. Systems thinking - Fusing the four learning disciplines so the one sees the whole picture, rather than the parts

Conclusion

Developing this learning culture allows an organization to perform better in productivity, quality, customer service, employee retention, and profit. To gain the maximum results through this,it should be available for employees, managers, leaders, and shareholders alike. Empowered with good values, systems, and development methods, learning organisations are set to take the future stage of good business practice.

References

Luhn , A. (2016). THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION
Senge, P. et. al. (1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization
Yadav, S. & Agarwal , V. (2016). Benefits and Barriers of Learning Organization and its five Discipline

12 comments:

JinendranSeptember 12, 2019 at 6:45 AM

Good article Isuru, simply explained about learning organization and its components and its very important to create a learning culture in the present changing environment.
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Malintha GannileSeptember 14, 2019 at 9:33 PM

Interesting article , nicely explained about Learning & Development. highlighted the importance of Learning Organization. nice work
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PrasannaSeptember 15, 2019 at 8:58 AM

Briefly explained interesting article. Nicely executed. Simply explained the importance of creating learning culture and how its influencing present context. Good Luck. Thanks for sharing.
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AchalaSeptember 16, 2019 at 5:55 PM

Good article Isuru, Lerning culture is well explaind here. As per scholars we know learning culture is helping people and its own organization to improve with it. But why organizations not much interested or fear to get into learning culture? Thanks for sharing
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Jehan RahimanOctober 5, 2019 at 6:03 PM

Every organisation should be a learning organisation where every employee will develop their own skills and experience in terms of personal development & perform well.
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Anupama KankanamgeOctober 12, 2019 at 5:04 AM

Developing a learning culture helps organizations to retain the talents within the organization. Good one.
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