Organizational learning and Knowledge Management
Organizational learning has become an increasingly important concept in today’s business world. ” The development of insights, knowledge and associations between past actions, the effectiveness of those actions, and future action” .Therefore it is argued that learning and knowledge management are two key aspects of judging a successful company.
In a ‘knowledge company’, knowledge is more easily transferred and made accessible to workers throughout the organization. When people have access to organizational knowledge, they can understand their environment and give it meaning. This can assist them performing better through continuous learning, share a vision and ultimately help the organization to become competitive. The financial, customer and internal perspectives generally lead to knowledge of weaknesses in an organization’s infrastructure, skills, automation which are restricting the organization to achieve better results. Focusing on these helps development of suitable measures to ensure that organization channels it’s investments properly to address all needs not only for infrastructure, but also on research and development, human capital development, improving employee satisfaction and increasing employee motivation. Organizational learning ability can be increased by a number of ways. Rampersad (2002) pointed these out as
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Creating conditions whereby people are willing to apply their knowledge, share and intensively exchange it with each other
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Establishing the organizational structure in such a way that people get sufficient space and opportunities to gain experiences and thinking
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Stimulating employees to formulate their own personal Balanced Scorecard and through this cultivate a positive attitude toward improvement, learning and development
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Making an inventory of the learning style and aligning it to the personal ambition, reviewing this periodically; aligning it to the planning, coaching and appraisal meetings and the 360˚-feedback system
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Establishing improvement teams in which a balance of personalities, skills and learning styles is present
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Developing and accepting self knowledge regarding their own favourite learning style and the ones of other team members, Giving people a sense of direction based on a shared ambition and linking them to each other
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Working with teams where team learning is central; teams that think and act from a synergetic perspective, and are well coordinated, with a feeling of unity
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Using images, metaphors and intuitions to share and exchange implicit knowledge and working with self-directing teams in an organizational network, using generalists with ample responsibilities and competences and where there are knowledge overlaps and task rotations between employees
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Stimulating employees to think about, identify and solve common problems as a team, letting traditional ways of thinking, constantly develop their own skills, allowing them to acquire experience and allow them feel responsible for company and team performances
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Having leaders who coach, help, inspire, motivate and stimulate, are action oriented, and constantly evaluate processes based on performance measures
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Having people who continually learn from their mistakes and openly communicate with each other, and constantly apply Deming’s and Kolb’s learning cycles in their actions Systematically working with problem solving methods (brainstorming, problem solving cycle, risk management etc
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Giving feedback about improvement actions undertaken. and
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Implementing a knowledge infrastructure; internet, intranet, library, evaluation sessions where allowing employees to concentrate on everything that happens in the organization.
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