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 com...

... middle of paper ...

.... 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. (Document ID: 1074629991).