留學assignment范文-建立一個高效的學習型組織
 

一個有價值的組織有幾點特征，他們必須從內部和外部本質上地了解環境，這樣的話他們的創造力水平就會受到這個知識的積極影響。他們必須要有遠見以便他們能夠帶領他們的商業帝國走向未來，所以他們是不斷發展的。一個組織必須是足夠靈活的，知道怎樣挑選好的管理者能夠監督他們的業務，從而讓他們在他們的視野范圍內自由地工作，一些最好的主意都是這些在日常業務和各種組織中想追求成功，并接受和鼓勵他們信任的企業管理者提出點子的人想出來的。一個企業必須有外交上的特點和手段，這樣他們能夠鼓勵團隊合作并利用多學科的方法來組織結構（赫斯力&彼得斯2010）。每當一個新的公司被創立，各種技術整合在一起，所以組織必須善于知道是誰？應該負責那些公司事務。
雇用包含所有上述特點的將有可能促使一個組織的成功。
 

Developing an Effective Learning Organization

 

There are several characteristics that are valuable to an organization. They must understand the environment internally and externally so that their creativity level is positively impacted by this knowledge. They must also be a visionary so that they can lead their business into the future, so they are constantly evolving. An organization must be flexible and know how to select good managers that will oversee their business so that they are free to work on their vision. Some of the best ideas will come from those who are in the business daily and any organization who wants to be a success must welcome the ideas of those they trust to manage their businesses. An organization must also have a diplomatic characteristic so that they can encourage teamwork and use multidiscipline approaches to organizational structures (Hisrich & Peters, 2010). Anytime a new venture is established a variety of skills are going to overlap, so the organization must be good at establishing who will be responsible for different aspects of the business. 
 

Employing all the aforementioned characteristics will lead to the success of any organization. The defining characteristics of a learning organization is that it contain people who are open-minded and eager to learn, develop, and improve the organization through data, training, and experience. Peter Senge views a learning organization 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 to see the whole together” (Kourdi, 2009). A company by definition can be profitable yet not a learning organization. To be profitable a company has to yield profit or have a financial gain. However, in order for a company to be considered a learning organization, the behavior of the employees must reflect the new knowledge and insights of the learning environment of the company. In this light, a company can indeed be a profitable yet unlearned organization. Many times because the bottom line of a company is on the profit side, the importance of learning becomes of little interest to the stakeholders. In order to combat this, it will take the collective efforts of the stakeholders, managers and employees because the whole entity must embrace and apply the learning. #p#分頁標題#e#
 

There are five disciplines that are central to learning organizations that can significantly improve a business. First it is essential that a business has systems thinking ability that will allow them to see how the parts of the system fit into the operation as a whole. It is hard to see the organization as a dynamic process if you fail to understand the interrelation between all the parts (Kourdi, 2009). Personal mastery is the second discipline essential to business learning. Each employee brings their work ethic, ideas, skill sets and objectivity to the organization. As their contribution is developed it adds to the learning and experience of the organization. 
 

The third discipline is mental models where we bring our learning to our conversations and expose our thinking abilities to others while sharing our thoughts and influencing others with our thoughts (Kourdi, 2009). It is evident when learning is not taking place in organization when individuals are isolated, fail to receive feedback on their actions and fail to receive or process new information. This can create a failure to link individual mental models and shared mental models in organization and becomes a barrier to individual and organizational learning (Turner, Mavin & Minocha, 2006). Vision is a discipline in any company, without a vision there is no purpose or goal to attain. In order for an organization to learn it has to have an outcome or vision for what that learning will accomplish. Lastly, group learning is a discipline that allows the tem to create results based on the collaborative effort of the first four disciplines. When people come together their learning is enhanced by what they receive as well as what they offer. 
 

The characteristics of the people who portray the aforementioned disciplines are easily observed in their behaviors to do the best for the success of the organization. These are the persons who are willing to share their ideas and focus on the goals of the organization. Many times they are referred to as hard-working, optimistic and team players. They will work past their designated times to solve problems simply for the reward of the solution. If there is learning to take place these persons are the first to attend and do so without grumbling and with little if any persuasion. They understand that in order for a company to grow it must learn and with learning comes change and with change comes growth and new opportunities for them and they company collectively. 
 

The incentive to change can be seen in the increased profit that increased knowledge can secure. Companies can save money by improving procedures through applicable training. Organizations need to build core competencies to outperform their rivals and for that they need organizations that are proactive, futuristic, strategic in thinking, and are capable of adaptability and are flexible to acquire new learning (Akhtar & Khan, 2011). They must seek out learning objectives that give them the competitive edge or allow them to be a worthy component in the marketplace. Companies can not allow routines and antiquated ideas to allow them to be left behind. Many of the fast food restaurants have allowed themselves to venture past and beyond their normal menus to compete with others. McDonalds now serves a variety of café drinks in order to compete with the variations offered by Starbuck’s and Dunkin Donuts. Learning in a company is necessary not only for growth but increased growth and stable profit. #p#分頁標題#e#
 

In order to become innovative and be a contributing force in the marketplace innovation many times requires change. It is the changing for competition that contributes to the hardships that go along with economical competition. Many times the creative disruptions cause many to lose employment, become displaced or cause a need for persons to develop skills they do not have. Creative disruption will cause the organization to not only evaluate overall success but also the success of each individual and therefore make changes (Hisrich, Peters & Shepherd, 2010). Sadly, in order to move forward with new ideas it causes some old ideas to be discarded and the people along with them. A strategy must be formulated in order to successfully generate ideas that maximize the benefits of new innovation while considering the effect implementation of these ideas will have on employees. 
 

There are many organizations that have employees who have been doing the same job, the same way for a number of years. When employees are comfortable in their current situation they are fearful of change and are more than likely to innately resist change and the resistance is shown in other behaviors. This is a barrier to the learning organization because these people also have the knowledge of experience that will greatly influence the learning that will take place. They already know the intricate details of the processes as in what works and what has failed. They now the interrelation between the parts and will automatically know where the pit stops may occur if a crucial step is missed or replaced. They create great barriers if they are not made to feel comfortable with the coming changes. If you are resistance to learn something new then failure is imminent. There are many who are against doing it a different because it involves an uncomfortable time of trial in error. In the long run change will streamline some processes which may result in a reduction of workforce unfortunately. However, the overall goal of any organization is to make profit and produce goods and services that ensure that profit, and change and learning is the avenue many take to accomplish this. 
 

The management must also be a part of the willingness to learn so that the employees are not hindered because of their reluctance to shift their ideas. The capacity of management to learn and to promote learning is an important element of an organization's learning capacity. However, one of the biggest learning dilemmas facing most organizations currently is how to get middle and senior managers to learn how to change and think differently. Last year, I took three of the processes we were doing at work and cut them down from three-day process to a two hour process by simply writing some formulas that did the work for us and combining the processes into one process. I immediately introduced this new process to the other managers and their departments to help them better manage their time as well. The check points and fail safes for our desired results were all in place and all that was left to do was to train the other administrators in the departments to implement the process. However, one of the managers refused to look at the new process or send his administrator to learn the new process, when I addressed him about it his reply was there was nothing wrong with the old process. His administrator asked me to show her how to do it anyway but I declined as not to force a process on his department or to get her in trouble for going against her manager’s wishes. This is a classic example of one the barriers that will hinder learning when those in charge sabotage the movement of learning. #p#分頁標題#e#
 

Experience is a great teacher and it is an important part of the learning process. Employees are privy to an abundance of data they can use to improve their organizations. Each interaction with a co-worker, customer, or manager is a learning experience. Each staff meeting is an opportunity for observation or a focus group. Not all research needs to be formalized; by simply framing daily experiences as "data" leaders and employees can become more critical of what they observe, read, feel, and think (Mathis, 2010). One essential key to the correct dissemination of information is learning from prior experiences. The information obtained at each level of the process has to be correctly communicated and documented to recognize patterns that will aid in problem solving. According to Garvin (2000), if deep learning is to occur then knowledge must be obtained from prior experiences in order to recognize a problem and have the necessary skills to adjust that problem. When processes are reviewed there is an opportunity for learning to take place. 

In order to know if your organization is learning it must have individuals that are learning as there can not be one without the other. Organizational learning represents the procedures to which organizations adhere for sustaining, supplementing and improving the knowledge practices related to their core functions (Turner, Mavin & Minocha, 2006). Learning can only take place in an environment where learning is cultivated, encouraged and rewarded. There can be technological systems in place but unless there is adequate training and a willingness to learn it is of no use to the organization. 
 

If an organization does not actively modify its behavior to reflect the learning it is not a learning organization (Gavin, 2000). With this definition in mind the barriers that my current company must overcome in order to become a true learning organization is to actively process the information and learning that is available through a myriad of avenues. The information is available to everyone but not everyone takes advantage of the learning. Our new SAP system has been in place for nearly two years and there are still people who will not use the system. They have gone through the training but are unwilling to take the pains of learning in order to successfully use the system. The company has established a learning website, training modules and even refresher courses so that the full potential of the system can be realized but since this is not mandatory few employees utilize the learning. 
 

In order to overcome this barrier, our company can use the learning that is required to perform specific duties as part of the review process for incentives. For example, a salesperson is required to keep up with their client base and those who have equipment, have slow sales and have pricing or product issues. They are able to generate a report that will tell them all of this information at once if they learn how to run the report using the new system. From experience, I can tell you that I receive numerous report requests from salesman when they have the access to perform the same actions but chose not to explore their learning possibilities. This creates a barrier because it hinders the salesperson from receiving their reports and it places the burden on another department and the learning process is lost. #p#分頁標題#e#
 

The four characteristics that will further alleviate the barriers at my organization are vision, personal mastery, mental models and group learning. Our organization has great visionary ideas that are quickly established at the corporate offices but the outlying branches rarely reach that goal unless they are the pilot location for a project. The vision is often communicated to all employees but little follow-up to ensure the learning that goes with the vision is seen. There are so many persons with years of experience that have little voice in the processes. In my department alone, out of 39 people the person with the lowest seniority has been there for 13 years. There is so much experience and mastery that can help some of the process that are created strictly in theory but without the essential input of the end user. Mental models are evident in our organizations, as with my earlier analogy of the process change but the acceptance of that free thinking is lacking. Sometimes I feel that there is an unwarranted competition between managers and everyone is trying to outshine the other so even though ideas are shared the implantation never occurs. This is why the last characteristic is so important, group learning. If we could come together and share our ideas and then implement the ideas that most positively affect all of the departments, a cohesive that now is absence between the management can exist and learning can be achieved. Individuals who characteristics are of an open-mind and are eager to learn, develop, and improve the organization through training, teamwork, and experience by using the five disciplines of learning can help their company become a true learning organization. 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Akhtar, N., & Khan, R. (2011). Exploring the paradox of organizational learning and learning organization. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 2(9), 257-270. ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 2296754931). 
 

Garvin, D. A. (2000). Learning in action: A guide to putting the learning organization to work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 
 

Hisrich, R.D., Peters, M.P., & Shepherd, D.A. (2010). Entrepreneurship (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin. 
 

Kourdi, J. (2009). Chapter 32 - Building a learning organization. Research Library. (Document ID: 2197584181). 
 

Mathis, D. (2010, May). Transformational learning: challenging assumptions in the workplace. Development and Learning in Organizations, 24(3), 8-10. doi: 10.1108/14777281011037227
 

Turner, J., Mavin, S., & Minocha, S. (2006). We will teach you the steps but you will never learn to dance. The Learning Organization, 13(4), 398-412. ABI/INFORM Global.