Concepts: Organizational learning as a new form of progress

Situations of organizational learning 

In the last decades of the past century organizational learning became a new form of leading the organization in progress. Organizational learning as a managerial discipline imposed itself on the former conditions in management: conditions of competition, hiding experiences and knowledge, harming the competition.

Peter Senge, a professor at the University of Massachusetts from the USA and one of the founders of the term “organizational learning”, realized that managers spent more time and energy hiding their knowledge and experiences, rather than sharing them in the organization and outside of it. Led by the premise that it is impossible to hide knowledge, together with his cooperators he started working on developing forms and ways of learning in each situation, everyone’s learning from everyone in an organization. According to him, a learning organization is an organization where people continuously update their capacity in order to achieve wanted results, where new and expansive models of thinking are encouraged, where the collective verve is free and where people constantly learn how to learn together (Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 1990).

Although we can often come across the terms “organizational learning”, “learning organization”, a lot of managers ask themselves the following questions: what is organizational learning, why is it necessary to learn in the organization, what is the benefit from applying the concept of organizational learning?

The example of the Dutch company “Shell” is well-known, where thank to the application of the concept of organizational learning, it managed to overcome the years of oil crisis in the early seventies of the past century, adjusting the strategy, structure, systems, managing style and the staff towards the new situation.

Organizational learning

Basically, learning and organizational changes are closely linked. The changes in the organization (that are inevitable) require changes and adaptations in the people’s behaviour within the organization, and it can be achieved only by adopting new ways and methods of working through learning. The organization needs to learn to adjust to all changes that occur in the surroundings and it requires constant learning in the organization:
·        learning to be (more) effective: to advance and extend the range and quality of the products and services towards the clients;
·        learning to be efficient: to advance the use of input elements for getting quality products and services;
·        learning for expansion: to expand and diversify the activities in the organization.

Since organizations consist of people, learning in organizations is based on the processes of people’s learning. Learning means creating new forms and ways of behaviour and the organization is considered to be a whole where all the things are mutually linked and dependent.

Organizational learning has two dimensions: how much are we, as individuals, capable of learning and how much can we create learning ambient for the others in the organization.

The basic task of a successful manager is to create conditions in the organization for application of the concept of organizational learning that is to enable situations of organizational learning:
1.      learning from the management
2.      learning from the supervisory
3.      learning in formal training
4.      learning from the environment
5.      learning from the colleagues
6.      self-education

In all these situations of organizational learning, within both the individual and the organization, there is a change of their attitudes, skills and knowledge.

 

Concept page

1.      Learning means creating new forms and ways of behaviour. There are three types of organizational learning:
-         learning by conditioning
-         operating learning
-         conscious learning

Conditioning is based on repetition and it can create very strong forms (automatism, routines) that are difficult to change.

Operating learning, also known as “behaviourism” and “stimuli reaction” is carried out through the working process and people learn through rewarding and/or punishing.

Conscious or intelligent, sensible learning is based on the comparison of the present situation and what we want it to be in the future (aim or objective), that is, the individual tries to correct what he is doing at the moment in order to achieve his/her objectives in the future. 

2. Learning organization is an organization where people continuously update their capacity in order to achieve wanted results, where new and expansive models of thinking are encouraged, where the collective verve is free and where people constantly learn how to learn together (Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 1990).