Only organizations that learn from themselves, from their virtues, from their mistakes, from their successes and failures, are prepared to adapt to the changing business world of these times and of future times.
Organizational Learning has been studied by a wide number of theorists and researchers from divergent schools and disciplines. All of them have different points of view but reach similar conclusions, among them the most important: Organizational Learning generates innovation and change processes, for the better, in the lifestyles and attitudes of the personnel that make up organizations.
The learning organization
Organizations have the power to learn through the individuals that comprise them, therefore, the training and development of people are a fundamental element in the scaffolding of the AP.
Without exception, organizational learning processes have occurred as defensive movements in the face of changes within organizations, motivated by variations in their environment. Argyris and Schon argue that basically the organizations that develop organizational learning start with simple anti-routine processes, which do not question the structure of the organization, its interrelationships with the environment, its values or its decision-making processes. Then it enters a second level in which organizational restructuring is sought, always starting from individual learning, and which questions the rationality behind the actions.
Organizational Learning
«Process that uses knowledge and understanding aimed at improving actions» Fiol and Lyles «Organizational Learning» In: Academy of Management Review No. 10
The AO generates, firstly, the possibility of thinking about a new design of the organization, since it allows integrating individual, organizational and environmental factors. This requires not only changes in structure, but changes in mentality. - The Japanese model is an example of the success generated by the creation of knowledge reflected in new products, ideas and designs. Drucker says that companies that do not undergo deep and serious exercises in creative destruction will not be able to be flexible enough to adapt to new markets and new customers - What the AO process really seeks is to find balance, brilliance and individual talent, innovation and group work, to achieve integration between the different functions, achieving the productive totality.
It can be said that the organization that seeks to protect and improve its capabilities, while betting on the exploration of others, enhances first, its human resources and then, its relationships with the environment: clients, suppliers, institutions,…
How to implement an AO process
Drew proposes seven basic activities to manage knowledge and to achieve the organizational self-knowledge that is required to carry out a beneficial process, these are:
1. Generate knowledge from internal operations or from research and development groups.
2. Gain access to both internal and external sources of information.
3. Transfer knowledge before it is used formally, through training or informally in work socialization processes.
4. Represent knowledge through reports, graphs and presentations, etc.
5. Become imbued with knowledge of processes, systems and controls.
6. Test the validity of current knowledge.
7. Facilitate all these different processes of knowledge generation through the establishment of a culture that values and shares the use of knowledge.
Learning organizations
"Organizations where people continually expand their aptitude to create the results they want, where new and expansive patterns of thought are cultivated, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people continually learn to learn together" Senge The leader's new work: building learning organizations In: Sloan Management Review No. 32
As you can see, it is very important to know very well the inside of the organization, its different processes, synergies and differences. But the individuals who make up companies should not be overlooked.
Bibliography
Argyris, Chris and Donald A. Schon (1996), Organizational Learning II, MA, Addison Wesley.
DREW, S. (1996), «Strategy and intellectual capital», Management Update, Vol.7, No.4.
