Learning Organisations

Moving towards a learning organization is something done BY people, not something done TO people or FOR people by someone else. So, the role of HR has to be in encouraging, facilitating, and supporting a move towards learning organizations. HR can never accomplish this themselves.

Then, if executives want to move towards a learning organization, they should direct their operating units to do so, and direct HR to move into a supportive role. If it’s the other way around, where HR gets the responsibility, it never works.

Knowledge management (KM) “any practice or process of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organisations (Scarborough 1999). Knowledge management involves converting knowledge sources by classifying related information then circulating to make the information to take place. Not all information is knowledge or all knowledge is important.

According to Blackler (1995), “knowledge is multifaceted and complex, implicit and explicit, physical and mental, verbal and encoded”. He also categorises knowledge in four as: embedded (technological – collective), enculturel (Values, beliefs – collective), embodied (practical knowledge – individual), and embraced (theoretical understanding – individual). Contrast on Blackler, Nonaka (1991) proposes that knowledge could be either individual or collective, cannot be both. Yet another argument comes from Scarborough and Carter (2000). They believe that knowledge appears from the collective experience and it is shared by member of the group. Knowledge also is the key ingredient of products and services. Therefore the difference among the organisations totally depends on the level to which information can be obtained and converted into knowledge.

When it is the subject of knowledge, people mainly consider documentation or codifying type of knowledge. Whilst that “explicit knowledge” is essential “tacit knowledge” is even more essential as it adds value for competitive advantage of organisations. Tacit knowledge is spontaneous, contextual, has a big connection with experience, documentation cannot be applied. It is believed that tacit knowledge represent big percentage of knowledge of an organisation. In other saying, Nonaka (1991) explained that the knowledge is either explicit or tacit. Explicit knowledge is available, recorded information. It is kept in databases, and it can be systematized, whereas tacit knowledge is in people’s minds. It is hard to articulate and it gains in personal experience. New knowledge starts with an individual Nonaka believes. Tacit knowledge needs to travel from one person to another. The main difficulty in the creation of new knowledge is that bringing the tacit knowledge on the surface and the difficulty is that it requires experience to do so.

Knowledge management is all about getting the valuable knowledge from people, who have it, to people, who need it to develop the organisational efficiency. As organisations are competing in information age, knowledge is the most important asset in the competition field more than physical and financial assets. Another issue is that culture of organisation may be slowing down the knowledge sharing. Open cultures will encouraged people to share their ideas and knowledge.

Knowledge management is on the subject of people. It straight connects to people’s knowledge and monitors how the knowledge could support organizational goal. It also uses the most valuable information which is more focus and meaningful. There is not certain regulation which would be difficult to change. KM is often revises the knowledge and checks its practicality in order to see its usefulness. It is generally have motivating feature on managers to ensure that they are working together with the purpose of reaching the organizational objectives.

The emphases on knowledge have brought new job lines; such as knowledge workers. There are workers who are called knowledge workers. Drucker (1993) describes them as “individuals who have high level of education, skills and ability to apply, in order to solve problems. Knowledge workers create the knowledge and are key players in spreading it. Tampoe (1993) highlights four core motivators for knowledge workers. First one is personal growth; the opportunities for individuals to realise their potentials. Second one is occupational autonomy; a work environment in which knowledge workers can achieve the task given to them. Third one is task achievement that a sense of achievement from producing works that is of high quality and the last one is money reward. Income is just a reward for their contribution to corporate success.

Human Research can make a great contribution to knowledge management as process of spreading and sharing knowledge start among people. The important role HR has here to make sure those organisations have the intellectual capital they need. The role of HR in knowledge management can be listed as; create open culture, importance of which will be sharing knowledge; create an atmosphere where trust is the matter; ensuring that activities where people can share knowledge person-to-person basis, such as workshops, seminars, etc; motivating people by rewarding them when there is knowledge sharing; look after the workers who contribute knowledge sharing by providing resources and finally it is important to senior managers should be appointed for the knowledge management to encourage them for encouraging their staff for knowledge sharing.

HR has an important role on improvement of the knowledge based cooperation. The important aim of organisations is to achieve the competitive advantage by developing and successfully implementing the knowledge. HR’s role here is to encourage management to develop purpose which will suit to organisational aim. HR has also contribution with KM by recommending on the design of process based organisations. These types of organisations are mainly networking, cross-functional, project teams or so where sharing knowledge is crucial. HR contribution on enhancing KM is also important. HR gives advice on how to keep the skilful and talented people who are too important knowledge sharing culture (Armstrong 2008).

Several knowledge management models and frameworks have been done. From the above model it can be understood that there is big and important connection between knowledge management and “organizational learning, system and technology, culture and strategy”. Knowledge management cannot be performed without learning in organizations. There are many divisions in organisational learning, yet there is no single structure which has successfully summarised the variety of its offerings. Learning organisation has much wider and more mature than organisation learning as well as knowledge management. Learning organisation will be explained in detail in later on.

A complex adaptive system (CAS) consists of a large number of agents, each of which behaves according to some set of rules. There rules require the agents to just their behaviour to that of other agents (Stacey, 2003). In other saying, agents work and adjust themselves according to each other.

Several experts describe CAS as the next evolution further than learning organization. Most businesses are throughout history there are several examples for business which used several planning activities that none of them worked. To be able to escape from this bad destiny now businesses are searching of knowledge management, to make planning dynamic and approachable to the ongoing globalization. Yet this is not always enough to cope up with fast changing unstable world. Organizations must adjust themselves to ongoing change environment. This situation made organizations to learn more about complex adaptive systems and its suitability to organizations.

Also in ongoing fast economy, nature is in the circle of change. These natural diversifications make confusion and chaos. Some chaos is accepted in order to make sure that systems are adaptive ensuring long-term survival. Business world is very much willing to adapt CAS. Everyday there are new stories about successful businesses and CAS. Wal-Mart is a very good example for it. Retailers of Wal-Mart now use smart tags to follow inventory items. These smart tags, which are called Radio Frequency Identification – RFID) depend on satellites to capture the movement of inventory items anywhere anytime. What happens is that shopping carts display items and amount as customer put them into the cart.

Feedback is very important for as it is for learning organizations. It is to manage the complex adaptive system. CAS requires two forms of feedback which are positive and negative feedback. Negative feedback is if change happens the reaction is to undo the direction of the change and maintain the general circumstance whereas positive feedback continuing changes.

Organizations adapt CAS because it gives the discipline to follow up the work. Butterfly effect for example is to show that small changes can have big effects. Organizations need to adapt CAS in order to adapt themselves into the competitive world of business http://www.exinfm.com/board/complex_adaptive_systems.htm

Chaos theory expresses the performance of certain dynamic systems. The systems develop with time and the dynamic could be very sensitive to first state which refers to butterfly effect. The single way to gather the benefits of chaos theory in organizational development is to adapt “the edge of chaos”. With edge of chaos, organizations have to find new and productive ways, adapt new marketing models to survive in the competition. For these learning organizations, airline industry is a good example, particularly Southwest Airlines. They not only did changes to survive but because well off too which they succeeded very well. On the other hand organizations which couldn’t cope or catch up with changes struggle. Unless they hold on the element of chaos and become creativity, they will disappear by time.

Although with edge of chaos organizations adapt change and they are best known with their creativeness, they do not constantly change. When they do changing, they do not change the core soul of the organization. After changing organization will still have the familiar identity. According to Shelton (2003) the safest way to use chaos theory in organizational development is not in the beginning of organizational change, but in the use of its principles in dealing with issues that arise within the organization. Complexity theory is not the same as chaos theory but chaos involves with complexity theory

Senge (1990) brings the concept of the fifth discipline into the organisational learning. He adds that each of the disciplines does provide a very important dimension in structuring the organisations which are willing to learn and carry on enhancing their capability. However, he also observes learning takes place when individuals work in teamwork. The five disciplines Senge identifies can be listed as; systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning.

Senge associates business and humans to a system in the systems thinking. It is an intangible structure and is a body for knowledge. Learning organisation wants its people to think in system. Personal mastery is the discipline of repeatedly illuminating and extending personal vision, focusing humans’ energies, developing patience, and seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential basis of the learning organisation. Mental models are assumption which specifies how people understand the world around them. It is internal picture of the world and he states that individuals can surface it by learning. Building shared vision involves skill of finding shared. Lastly team learning is essential as teams are the fundamental learning unit in modern organisations. Without team learning, organisation cannot learn. In Senge’s five disciplines, integrity is core because it is more difficult to integrate new tools than just using them separately. Fifth discipline is system thinking. Without system thinking no learning in organization would ever happen. The systems thinking leads to experiencing more and more of interconnectedness of life and seeing wholes rather than parts. Whenever there are problems in an organisation, according to systems thinking, the problems arise from underlying structures, not from individual mistakes. (Senge, 1990)

The learning organisation is an expression which illustrates people gathering to success goals, big or small, in states where they all search for ways of doing things more effectively. Senge (1990), who created the term, explains “a leaning organisation as one where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together”. In learning organisations, people are constantly watchful for signals which show whether they are reaching their goals. Therefore it can be said that learning organisations continuously look at the detail of actions. Also feedback is vital to the learning organisation because it needs to measure its success. Thus, it accounts, reports, spreadsheets, salespeople’s views of customer opinion, shop floor perceptions of a new systems used by activity streams of people.

Apple computing – -Japan is a perfect example of success when organizational learning is done according five discipline.

Although Apple Japan is world wide company, it had one percent of the market in Japan until 1989. Nonetheless with the new president the company succeeded one billion dollar in six years time. The company had some help from a consultant firm. The main plan was to increase the market share as well as efficiency of the company. Being able to gain the market share and improve sales, they come to a decision on increase the number of the distributors, customer management and launch the notion of learning organizations.

Motorola’s aim is to find better ways to provide the knowledge and skills. To do so, the company adapts the multimedia training which intends to get training to all Motorolans globally, reduce the cost and time is spent on trainings, and increases the knowledge of the firm. Motorola University was established in 1981 and by 1990 it had extended in US, Eastern Europe, South America and the Asia-Pacific region. Today, many mangers, supervisors and employees from all parts of Motorola have attended diversity training. This training helps participants to have more opportunities to develop and achieve their full potential

According to Brown (1998) “the relationship between culture and learning is one of the reciprocal interference. Not only is the rate at which organisations learn dependent on culture but the culture on an organisation will be profoundly influenced by the rate, and content of, organisational learning.” Schein aggress with the explanation of Brown that the organisational culture develops through complex interactive learning process. Organisational culture plays a main role in knowledge management and organisational learning. Not every organisation can adapt the learning organisations. There are some barriers to at the individual and group levels. At the individual level, unawareness is an important limitation. They are failing to notice very clear and obvious information and understanding what they notice, having a limited short memory that valuable information can be forgotten easily. Cognitive limitation is more noticeable when there is a fast changing and complex environment which overload people and confused them. At the collective level is the important part of organisational learning. Organisational politics can be barrier for groups and individuals to learn, or organisational culture also can slow down the process of learning.