Learning Theories
This article presents a different perspective on learning organizations, more focused on the individual and how the organization best serves them. How can an organization avoid "losing out on its learning abilities when members of the organization leave"? What are the six factors related to time? These relate not only to constraints on learning but also to operational and project activities of organizations writ large. Keep these in mind whenever you plan a new project or for your current projects or operational support roles, and make sure they are considerations for defining your scope. Managing up is something analysts do all the time. This happens when you work with your managers to refine requirements, develop your TOR, and define your scope. It is also a key skill for ensuring your analytic findings find a receptive audience, despite expected results. Have any of these tips helped you to effectively "manage up" in the past? How could you apply some of them in the future to communicate more effectively with your decision-makers?
Typical general influencing factors in organizational learning
The factors for gathering and managing knowledge are many and diverse within a learning organization. Three of the typical general issues or influencing factors in learning organizations are context, history, and survival. The idea of context is intrinsically tied to socially constructed elements. Lane discusses this factor saying, "assumption of most organizational learning theory is that learning is socially constructed, that is, what is learned and how learning occurs are fundamentally connected to the context in which that learning occurs". How the culture, or context, of an organization functions is part of an influencing factor on the type of learning organization it will be.
One key aspect of organizational learning to remember is that an organization should not lose out on its learning abilities when members of the organization leave. The concept of organizational memory means that effective learning organizations should not only influence the current members, but also future members due to the experiences, beliefs, and norms that are accumulated along the way. Creating a learning organization is only half the solution to a challenging problem. Equally important is unlearning some of the past that has not moved the company forward on a path of healthy growth.
Developing a work culture that values creativity and encourages innovation is imperative to an organization that desires to learn and produce new ideas or products. In an early article, Shallcross shares the role of the leader in creating an open environment to new ideas - "the role of the leader in creativity training is one of providing a climate that is nonjudgmental, of helping each individual to realize personal uniqueness and the uniqueness of others". Suh concurs with the importance of managerial encouragement for the innovating thinking of the worker in the areas of planning, learning, and production.
Amabile points to six general categories of effective management practice in creating a learning culture within an organization: (1) providing employees with challenge; (2) providing freedom to innovate; (3) providing the resources needed to create new ideas/products; (4) providing diversity of perspectives and backgrounds within groups; (5) providing supervisor encouragement; and (6) providing organizational support.
Second is the issue or factor of history. The implications of past endeavors and attempts at growth or learning will affect the long-term view of learning overall within that organization. Lane wrote, "A related aspect of the process of learning is a view of the organization as an embodiment of past learning. The concept of memory as the storehouse of either individual or organizational knowledge is further explicated by reference to the there term 'mental models'… guide the acquisition and organization of new knowledge". The ability of an organization to assimilate and diffuse both new and old information will determine the longevity of developing a learning organization through healthy means.
Lastly, the issue of survival is the basic premise for becoming a learning organization. Ortenblad says, "according to the critical literature most or all organizational learning theorists indicate that survival is an important object for learning". This concept is basic to human nature, survival of the fittest. In order for an organization to exist long term, it must learn more than just new fads or moments of knowledge, it must learn consistently over time for this is a learning organization.
Neilson and Pasternack provide a convincing example of this survival anxiety in their account of Caterpillar's change from what they term to be an over-managed organization to a resilient organization. Komatsu's early 1980's attack on Caterpillar and the first losses in Caterpillar's history were anxiety provoking to the point that excessive bureaucracy, centralized authority, and a highly political culture were jettisoned successfully.
Source: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Learning_Theories/Organizational_Learning:_Influencing_Factors
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