I guess that organizational learning is one of the most important aspects of organizational development as it helps modern companies to improve their performance and introduce knowledge management initiatives. Organizations learn when they increase their knowledge of action relationships by obtaining information that they recognize as being potentially useful. This is achieved through the processing of information. Our Company needs reimbursement and extra time for adult learning as these strategies will help it to improve productivity and increase profits.
As a number of authors have pointed out, adult learning encompasses the development of the organization (Mayo 1998). Additional time spent on adult learning will help our company to train and support all employees and avoid permanent training courses. From a scientific point of view, adult learning is the process by which information is obtained from the environment and added to the collective stock of knowledge within the organization. Information distribution involves sharing information sources among organizational members as it is needed or can be applied. Information interpretation refers to the process of establishing a shared understanding based on distributed information. Storing information plays a critical role in organizational learning since socially accepted past experiences need to be accumulated for future use (Goh, 1998).
For human resource managers, I would advise taking into account that the organization learns when information is acquired from outside the boundaries of the firm and integrated with existing information. This process focuses on the breadth of organizational learning that is achieved by acquiring a large pool of external information. When the acquisition is linked directly to interpretation, the use of rich media is necessary to make sense of the environment to be able to detect threats and opportunities. In this context, face-to-face communication, teleconferencing, and the telephone provide multiple cues and allow for rapid feedback, thereby facilitating understanding. Task analyzability is an additional factor to be considered for media choice. Task analyzability refers to the way that individuals are able to respond to problems that arise in the process of task completion (Goh, 1998). The difficult tasks are those for which no suitable solutions are known ahead of time. Since the analyzability of a task makes reference to its degree of ambiguity, this determines the type of media required for learning. In situations involving difficult tasks, this requires the use of rich media in order to arrive at solutions that are agreed upon by organizational members. In situations of analyzable tasks, media high in scope are suitable, since organizational members know how to respond if the type of problem is known. Under these circumstances, managers search for more information to be able to solve the problem that is a characteristic of an uncertain task, but not of an ambiguous one (Armstrong, 2003).
For our company, reimbursement initiatives play a crucial role as the reimbursement initiatives often manifest themselves in very cohesive teams affording greater productivity. The leader is often referred to as the manager that holds the productive work team together. The tighter the team is held together, the more productive the team should be. I guess that to improve the cohesiveness of the work team there are many things the effective leader should do. Just like team formation, team conflict, earlier on, was also believed to be of no benefit whatsoever to an organization and was to be prevented at any cost. However, we now realize that team conflict is also inevitable and on some occasions can actually be beneficial to the greater well-being of the organization. While it is still a good course of action to prevent misunderstanding when it does arise the effective leader needs to understand the nature and the causes of the conflict and then choose an appropriate action to deal with it (Armstrong 2003).
Additional time spends on adult learning is needed because it will inference communication and interaction between all employees. Personally, I suppose that effective interpersonal communication will increase morale during the training process. In other situations, it may be more prudent to communicate the message down to one’s employees in order to obtain the feasibility of accomplishing a particular task before approaching top managements being unprepared for their questions. After the medium and direction of the message have been selected, the sender then transmits the message. Upon receipt of the transmission, the receiver will then begin the image reproduction process. The effective communicator will not allow the communication process to terminate here. He or she will elicit feedback to ascertain to what extent the original image transmitted is the image that the receiver reproduced. This processing and reprocessing of feedback is an activity that requires some very well-tuned behavior, sensitive skills, and a little more processing time than some managers are willing to give (Goh, 1998).
The facts mentioned above suggest that productivity begins to suffer as the individual becomes lackadaisical about his or her duties. The individual then becomes habitually tardy and incurs a much higher than normal level of absenteeism. Eventually, the stress can push a person into a situation of alcohol or drug abuse. Obviously, the effective leader must do everything possible in his or her power to eliminate the sources of stress that prevail in the work environment. All of the efforts mentioned above that encourage IBM’s team cohesiveness and minimize team conflict will have a positive effect in reducing stress. In addition, seeing that people are properly trained and that they understand their job responsibilities is also a very important stress reduction technique. Probably the most effective means of encouraging a healthful work environment is to maintain an open communication channel that people are invited to utilize knowing that they can find a sensitive ear to their problems (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1996).These are the organizations that will survive and prosper in the information age of the future. To survive, organizational members must be taught to appreciate and alter their mental models of the future so that surprises are prepared for before their impact on the organization. One of the key functions of the HRM unit is to serve as a scanning unit that watches the environment for patterns of change that affect the organization. The HRM unit is in contact with many sources of current data about the future and the market place (Armstrong 2003).
If the company will not value reimbursement and stop adult learning programs, it will reduce positive results and motivation of employees. For instance, companies like Toyota and Ford that ignore these realities, impact on their operations and strategies are suffering from a form of corporate myopia. Organizations that actively scan their environments anticipate emergent problems and take advantage of opportunities that may arise over time. Reimbursement and additional time spent on adult learning is crucial because the increased connection between people and machines leads to widespread access of information to people in organizations. The integration of various computing technologies allows information to be stored so that organizational members can retrieve the information from the collective database. The urgency of the task associated with communication is another important criteria in media choice. Urgent tasks are more likely to lead to a response with media that have a real-time, synchronous response capability (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1996).
The vivid example of adult learning advantages and the value of reimbursement is IBM Corporation. The more experienced an IBM’s knowledge worker is with a medium, the more likely it is that he or she will have a positive attitude towards that medium and therefore use it. So, media experience reflects an individual’s attitude towards a medium, thereby explaining some of the differences in media use between knowledge workers. Knowledge about areas where efficient communication technology is employed will become part of the organizational patterns of use – for example, new communication technologies maybe better suited than short-turn meetings to longitudinal interaction (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1998; (Mayo 1998).
In sum, additional time spent on adult learning meets the needs, expectations and goals of our company and its employees. Innovative technologies and the new media will help our employees to master new knowledge and acquire new professional skills. Motivation, positive moral climate, technologies and learning will help employees to acquire new knowledge and skills at the shortest possible period of time. If there is a reward system in place that encourages competition between various project teams, then knowledge workers are less likely to distribute information using widely accessible learning programs.
References
Armstrong, M. (2003). Human Resource Management. 8th edn. Kogan Page.
Goh, S. C. (1998). Toward a Learning Organization: The Strategic Building Blocks.
SAM Advanced Management Journal, 63 (3), p. 5.
Mayo A. (2003). Creating a Training and Development Strategy. London: Institute of Personnel and Development.
Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1996). The Knowledge Creating Company, Oxford University Press, New York.