Organizational Learning

Learning is the way we create new knowledge and improve ourselves. Brown and Duguid describe organizational learning is the bridge between working and innovating. Organizational Learning is a process to enable organizations to better use the knowledge of their members to make business decisions. In a conventional organization, decisions are often based on management perspective without taking into account the other members of the organization. A business using Organizational Learning recognizes the value added by including all of its members in the decision making process.
A Learning Organization recognizes that a business consists of people and it takes a commitment from all in the organization to best obtain the organization’s goals. Through Organizational Learning an organization gains knowledge and develops skills to empower its members to work as a cohesive team.
The following table saws some of the key differences between a Conventional Organization and a Learning Organization. Conventional Organization | Learning Organization | Locked into management’s views of methods and goals. | Flexible and open to new ideas. | Makes decisions based on what currently best fits the organizational structure. | 1. Willing to disregard the status quo in favor of innovation. 2. Management encourages all members to continuously rethink what they do, how they do it, and how they might do it better | Adapts and/or reacts to change. | Anticipates the future and strives to create services and products before others are able to perceive the needs. |

Organizational learning is important to organizational change and development with the changing environment, technologies and other things. As well as it helps to solve organizational problems.

Organizational learning focused originally on the practice of five core disciplines, or capacities as follow:
Personal mastery
Managers must go beyond knowing what is important to achieve, they must have the ability to