Learning Organisation: an Introduction
Learning Organization
By Subodh Shakya
“A Learning Organization is one in which people at all levels,individually and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about”-Peter Senge
It is a fact that learning is a continuous process. What we learn today will be obsolete tomorrow and what we learn tomorrow will be obsolete the very next day and this cycle continues. Therefore, we must learn and explore new things every day to keep us up-to-date. Likewise, the same is true in the case of organization. In organizations, what is practiced today, the set of rules, the technologies being used and the human resource will also be obsolete in due course of time. Organizations, therefore, must focus to build the learning environment so that the employees can learn new things every day and come up with creative and innovative ideas to lead organization through the ultimate success.
With the ever rising competition and changes, the organizations have started to feel the need of continuous transformation to cope with them. Also, the ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only lasting competitive advantage for the organization[1]. As a result of the felt need, Peter Senge developed the concept of Learning Organization (Senge, 1994).He once stated in an interview, that a learning organization is a group of people working together to collectively enhance their capabilities to create results they really care about and popularized the concept of the learning organization through his book “The Fifth Discipline”.In the book, he proposed the following five disciplines [2]: 1. Systems thinking: Organizations are a system of interrelationships. To become more successful we need to analyze these relationships and find the problems in them. This will allow an organization to eliminate the obstacles to learning. 2. Personal mastery: An individual holds great importance in a learning organization. Personal development holds
By Subodh Shakya
“A Learning Organization is one in which people at all levels,individually and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about”-Peter Senge
It is a fact that learning is a continuous process. What we learn today will be obsolete tomorrow and what we learn tomorrow will be obsolete the very next day and this cycle continues. Therefore, we must learn and explore new things every day to keep us up-to-date. Likewise, the same is true in the case of organization. In organizations, what is practiced today, the set of rules, the technologies being used and the human resource will also be obsolete in due course of time. Organizations, therefore, must focus to build the learning environment so that the employees can learn new things every day and come up with creative and innovative ideas to lead organization through the ultimate success.
With the ever rising competition and changes, the organizations have started to feel the need of continuous transformation to cope with them. Also, the ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only lasting competitive advantage for the organization[1]. As a result of the felt need, Peter Senge developed the concept of Learning Organization (Senge, 1994).He once stated in an interview, that a learning organization is a group of people working together to collectively enhance their capabilities to create results they really care about and popularized the concept of the learning organization through his book “The Fifth Discipline”.In the book, he proposed the following five disciplines [2]: 1. Systems thinking: Organizations are a system of interrelationships. To become more successful we need to analyze these relationships and find the problems in them. This will allow an organization to eliminate the obstacles to learning. 2. Personal mastery: An individual holds great importance in a learning organization. Personal development holds
References: 1. Aggestam, L.2006.Learning Organization or Knowledge Management:which came first, the chicken or the egg? Vol.35, No. 3A. 2. Fulmer, Robert M., Keys, J. Bernard. (1998). A Conversation with Peter Senge: new developments in organizational learning. Organizational Dynamics, 33-42. 3. (2005). Learning Organization. A to Z of Management Concepts & Models., pp. 190–191. 4. Edmondson, Amy C. The Competitive Imperative of Learning. Harvard Business Review. July-August 2008., pp. 65.