Organizational Learning

Organizational learning depends upon a variety of factors, including: organizational strategy, culture, absorptive capacity, problem solving ability, and employee participation.  These factors are incorporated in the six organizational learning focuses: collectivity of individual learning, process or system, culture or metaphor, knowledge management, continuous improvement, and possibly creativity and innovation as a sixth competency.

1. Collectivity of Individual learning- Organizational learning takes place as a result of individuals experiencing a problematic situation and manifesting themselves as organizational behavior.  A learning organization, therefore, cultivates and encourages individual improvement that contributes to the whole and seeks solutions on the organization’s behalf.  Learning organizations are thereby classified based on the sum of their individuals’ edification.
2. Process or system learning- Organizational learning is the process by which organizations follow and govern their experiences.  This process is often illustrated in the five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.
3. Culture and metaphor- A learning organization should be seen as a metaphor and not as a building where participants learn in order to improve organizational performance.
4. Knowledge management- Organizational learning is the changes in the conditions in which knowledge exists.  It encompasses the consumption, processing, improvement, and conveyance of information with organizational involvement.  It also includes executing experiences, understanding, and acumen in future activities.
5. Continuous Improvement- A perpetual pledge to train and develop individuals in order to improve the organization.
6. Creativity and Innovation- is encouraged and believed to be necessary for companies to, not only continuously improve, but to competitively gain market share in today’s accelerated climate.

Organizational strategy is imperative if organizational learning is going to take place and is the route organizations take to get from where they are to where they need to be.  Some essential strategic considerations are: relationships, skills and proficiency, business operations, talent management practices, and accountability.  It is important for organizations to understanding and internalized that strategy is only theory that has to be translated into practice.  This critical conversion may be the single, most difficult, reason that organizations fail to successfully implement strategies.  We typically design, decorate, and display strategies that don’t get buy-in from those ultimately responsible for their actualization.  More attention, appreciation, and resources have to be invested in the execution of strategies and in those who are charged with the task.  Too often organizations engineer attractive strategies that are used as insurance mechanisms and go no further than the standard operating procedures manual.  In today’s business community, over 70% of most companies’ value is comprised of intangibles (knowledge, abilities, and/or relationships), which are all linked directly or indirectly to human capital.  This statistic supports the fact that serious scrutiny should be spent on the translation of strategy from theory to practice.

An organization’s culture is pivotal to whether it becomes a true learning organization or just models the academic posture as a pseudo-intellectual environment.  Organizational culture is a communal attitude or personality and consists of the behaviors, values, ethics, complexions, and character of organizational members.  Culture is difficult to distinctly define, but everyone knows it when they sense it.  It expresses itself as an identifiable atmosphere that, whether good or bad, is representative of the organization and its parts.

An organization’s absorptive capacity reflects the organization’s ability to recognize new and relevant information, adequately acquire it, transfer it to personnel, and implement it in an impactful way.  Absorptive capacity is often distorted and fragmented due to a lack of commitment and resilience or an inability to execute effectively.  Many organizations, for a variety of reasons, fail to convert theory to practice, thereby inhibiting transformational results.  Organizational learning requires a practical process that ensures intellectual ownership so that participants perform because of who they are not what they have been told to do.

Organizations as well as individuals make changes for one of three reasons: pain, force of circumstance, and/or humility.  Therefore, a prerequisite for change is a perceived problem; an uncomfortable situation that prevents profitability, productivity, or progression.  Because of this reality, organizations must possess the ability to problem solve through critical thought.  They cannot be afraid to look in the mirror, honestly and objectively evaluate themselves, accurately diagnose the problem, and effectuate resolve that yields results.
 

None of the above factors mean anything without employee participation.  Organizations’ initial responsibility is to gain buy-in from its internal customers.  If an organization is to undergo any kind of change, the individuals who are assigned the task and charged with fulfillment have to internalize directives and carry them out as if they were their own.  Imagine a Director having to implement a new sales strategy.  The sales force is ultimately going to be the ones conveying this to the end user or consumer.  However, the sales strategy has to travel through the organizational structure and be translated with authentic consistency.  This means that the Director is sold on the strategy, he in turn sells it to Management, who then sell it to the sales force, who use it to convince customers to use one product over another.  At the end of the day, organizations have to have willing and able participants at every level of the spectrum.
 

There is an abundance of investigative literature that supports the theory of organizational learning.  In addition to the organizational learning ideologies, there must also be a way to assure intellectual ownership so that there is on-demand execution.  Desired behaviors must ultimately occur because of who one is not because of what they have been told to do.  We all want to be better at whatever it is that we decide to do, and, under optimal circumstances, we become self-motivated rather than having to be coerced.  Learning then becomes life, which translates into an environment where critical thinking and problem solving benefit the organization through the employee.  Another prerequisite that must occur is how knowledge is transferred, which determines the quality and quantity of organizational learning taking place.  Conclusively, organizational learning is more than just the sum of individual cognition, it is the interaction of experiences in a critical thinking and problem solving environment that combines the six focuses of organizational learning in a way where individuals altruistically learn, share, and implement while embracing the organization as a whole.