Organizational Development article: The Learning Organization Revisited

As part of one assignment I had to read a Organizational Development themed article and comment upon it. This article was located on the Roosevelt University blog entitled: “The Learning Organization Revisited” I will post my response to the blog below, but I recommend reading the blog and maybe even commenting upon the article itself. Here is my posting which you will find also upon the site:

I like the idea of what respecting others in the workplace to create a learning environment, in my experience so far I have not seen any organization, department or team that meets or exhibits this type of thought process. Usually when it comes to stimulate any type of learning it is done by self-motivated employees or individuals from the training and development department, the managers play no part in the learning process. What managers can do, as mentioned in the video, for assisting employees contributing to the learning process are not instilled in the usual organizational culture and instead are thought of as characteristic of “weak” leadership. Giving a chance for employees to have a debate regarding ideas, policies and procedures even during “open house” discussions that I have seen, are just opportunities for managers to identify troublemakers or squash “challenges” to the current method of “doing things” in regular organizations.

Although I believe organizations that have this type of learning environment established, have managers who openly encourage innovation, and the dissemination of best practices will be highly productive and successful, I have not seen it yet. To do so most organizations need a change to their entire organization’s culture, to reverse the mindsets of CEOs and management staff included that believe creating supportive learning environment in which best practices can be shared and discussion of alternative points of view are not complete wastes of time. If the organization is serious about change, and the management staff is not it is in the best interest of the organization to move forward with personnel changes and recruit leaders who are to committed to this new environment.
I have taken the Learning Organization Survey as recommended by the authors of the article and my organization scaled highest score was in the area of “Time for reflection” at 48.6 I had five of these categories in averaging at 14.3% the others in the low twenties and thirties. This was far above what I expected to score for my organization but quite accurate in various areas.

Reference
Iverson, Kathleen (2012) “The Learning Organization Revisited” February 13, 2012 RU Training @ Roosevelt University in Chicago, Graduate Program in Training & Development, Roosevelt University Retrieved on April 5, 2017 from:
https://rutraining.org/2012/02/13/the-learning-organization-revisited/