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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
Exploring the Paradox of Organizational Learning
and Learning Organization
Dr. Naveed Akhtar (Corresponding Author)
Ph.D (Management Sciences)
Visiting Faculty Member, Bahria University, Shangrilla Road, Islamabad
Dr. Rashid Ahmad Khan
Dean Management Sciences, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad
Abstract
Organizational learning was and still is the area of interest for academicians,
organizational development experts, and researchers because of its inherent ability to
generate competitive advantage. 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
learnings. The concept of learning organization has a wide spread acceptance, and is
equally important and applicable in educational, business; private or public organizations.
Scholars present different views about the organizational learning. But the recent upsurge
prescribes few contextual factors that facilitate or hinder learning in organizations.
Therefore, views of different authors are presented with their contextual factors or
components of a learning organization. At the end commonalities from the framework are
chosen and recommended for any future empirical study.
Keywords: Exploring , Paradox , Organizational Learning , Learning Organization
1. Introduction
The concept of learning organization (LO) is gaining importance in academicians,
scholars, and practitioners as the competition is increasing. The learning organization
notion has insights, applications from different businesses and organizations: private or
public. The concept of LO can be applied to educational institutions. Neefe (2001) work
is an ample example of research work on identification of the universities as a learning
organization. Moreover she determined few contextual factors that are necessary for the
universities to be and become a learning organization.
Managers are in dire need of improving the competitiveness through meeting the
customer demands, innovating new products, adopting new technology. Organizations
want to capitalize on present competencies and identify, and develop new such that they
become ahead of competitors improving productivity and organizational performance.
Therefore, the requirement of the present era is a more flexible, adaptable, and even
proactive organizations. For all that the requirement is to learn faster than the competitors
(De Geus, 1988). It is theoretically claimed that the learning organization is the
organization that is capable of achieving competitive advantage (Goh, 2003; Senge,
1990). Garvin (1993) defines a leaning organization is an organization that is skilled at
creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect
new knowledge and insights. Scholars have different views while describing the learning
in organizations. Few argue it is a process that is aimed at changing cognitive and
behavioural aspect of the organization to make organization adaptable and flexible. Few
COPY RIGHT © 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 257
JANUARY 2011
VOL 2, NO 9
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