ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING & MANAGING CHANGE

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

In the past, there were three elements necessary for a business to exist and these were:

1.       Capital

2.       Land

3.       People

Nowadays, the first two elements can be eliminated given that land is not necessary as one has access to technology and capital can be significantly reduced when starting up a business. People, with their knowledge, constitute then the most important asset within enterprises.

In this way, ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING refers to how a group can gain knowledge, to how companies can improve, reduce costs and develop new techniques. LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS are then those that reinvent themselves as a whole by adapting to the environment and being able to sell new ideas and products. In relation to this topic, Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline mentions that companies need to be creative, innovative and be able to implement ideas in an efficient way in order to gain profits. All in all, ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING allow to do things better.

To learn more about Organizational Learning watch the following video which is a conference by Peter Senge, an organizational learning expert.

Source: Peter Senge – Organizational Learning Expert. (2010, August 25). Retrieved May 15, 2011, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLFCrv7-XlI&feature=related

MANAGING CHANGE

Globalization and the homogenization of cultures have been the source to many changes in today’s world and organizations find no escape in facing them. Even if change has been a constant in the story of human kind, the characteristic of change in recent times is its increased speed. MANAGING CHANGE refers to how organizations adapt and face the fast speed changing global business environment. The competitive environment (see diagram of Porter’s Five Forces), and the whole system around an organizations (its customers, owners, etc) is changing, as well elements like technology and the organization itself. MANAGING CHANGE implies how the organization and its inner structure respond to modifications in the environment due to globalization.

However, the RESISTANCE TO CHANGE phenomenon poses a serious problem to management. It results from the fear to change and management has to help the organization as a whole to go beyond resistance. Change and conflict go together because conflict arises when change is not managed and handled properly. 

DISCUSSION: What would be the relationship between cross cultural environments and organizational learning strategies?

Cross cultural environments are those composed of people belonging to different cultural backgrounds. In other words, it’s an environment that gathers the knowledge of different countries and cultures. The relationship that can be established between cross cultural environments and organizational learning strategies is that the later can benefit from the variety of knowledge provided by cross cultural environments, which are rich from various points if one considers that no individual culture has been entirely successful, and mixing different cultures and getting out and profiting from the best of each one can be a very good strategy to face today’s globalized world. The interaction between cultures is creating a completely different world dynamic that can only be understood and profited from a cross-cultural context. Furthermore, if the world as a whole is developing and growing (some regions more than others) under these new dynamics, then companies can also profit from it as cross-cultural environments trigger the development of more effective and comprehensive learning strategies within enterprises.

To explain this, I believe that organizational learning strategies can be dramatically improved if organizations look towards other fronts in search of new techniques that allow them to gain knowledge, improve and reduce costs, all in all to do things better. Looking at the ones that have achieved greater things and replicating things that are useful for a specific organization is always a good idea to set the pace for greater development. The knowledge acquired by other countries are represented by its people in a cross cultural environment and with their input companies can learn from the positive aspects of each culture and replicate them, at the same time as learn from the ones that have had negative impacts.

All in all, in cross-cultural environment knowledge of different parts of the world are present, providing ideas, opinions, points of view and feedback that differ in contents, but that as a whole are a richer source of information regarding how the organization can do things better. In this way organizations become more receptive and open to global trends as their learning strategies grow in size and scope.