Organisational learning + Change + Conflict

Nowadays, due to the global competition and the increased customer sophistication, organizational learning has been becoming not only a need but also an essential pillar for the survival of organizations. 

O’Keeffe proposes an interesting set of characteristics that must develop an organization to be a learning one and how each contribute to the effective learning.

But this is not an easy process is a challenge that not all organizations achieve to manage or do in the proper way. In many cases organizational culture become a barrier to develop OL, because it requires a culture that encourage, support and facilitate transformation and learning. This requires that the three culture that are present in an organization, the operator, engineering and executive (Sceien, 1996), align themselves with the same objectives, achieving mutual understanding and promote trust, openness and communication among them in order to make the learning initiatives on lived. 

Randy, G. Social learning blog. [Cartoon]. Available at:
http://www.dashe.com/blog/social-learning/brain-rules-for-learning-who-knew

Examples of some organisational learning practices:

• Johnsonvile Foods’: policy of giving each employee one day a year to spend with an employee in another department.
• Toyota Canada: departments invite employees from other departments into their monthly meeting and take staff on tours if the company.
• Honda: requires each manager to exchange each jobs for a two-week period with a counterpart in another function.
• General Motors: plants performance evaluations include an item on networking that encourages the integration of information.

 REFERENCES:

• Dixon N. (1999). The organizational learning cycle: how we can learn collectively. Second Edition. Gower Publishing. Retrieved on May 6, 2011 from: http://books.google.com/books?id=gTn1rJFSOm0C&dq=organizational+learning&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
• Singh, Kavita. 2010. "An Analysis of Relationship between the Learning Organization and Organization Culture in Indian Business Organizations". Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies. Vol. 1  (1): 142-165.
• Ted O’Keeffe, (2002) "Organisational learning: a new perspective", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 26 Iss: 2/3/4, pp.130 – 141. May 2, 2011. DOI: 10.1108/03090590210422012