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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
others prescribe contextual factors that facilitate or hinder learning and create competitive
advantage.
2. Aims and objectives
This article exploratory in nature is focused at defining the concept of a learning
organization, discussing frameworks of the concept, designing an integrative method that
enable the researcher to identify the most common and important factors. Moreover,
extracting few dimensions or factors that facilitate the learning in organization which can
be recommended and undertaken in future for empirical findings about the concept under
discussion.
3. Defining Organizational Learning and Learning Organization
The objective of this section is to explore and define the concepts of organizational
learning and learning organization. Theories and frameworks pertaining to these concepts
will be discussed to identify the most important characteristics.
The learning Organization term sounds attractive to the practitioners of
organizational Developments and business managers. The terms organizational leaning
and the learning organizations are used interchangeably (Tsang, 1997). The activities
taking place in organizations can be termed as organizational learning while a learning
organization can be differentiated as the organization that is involve in deliberate efforts
to improve learning in the organization. Put simply, the relationship between the two can
be described as a learning organization is one which is good at organizational learning
(Tsang, 1997). The concept of learning in organizations was taken as practice because of
its explicit impact on organizational performance improvement. The concept under
discussion is linked with and has contributions from the literature of strategy,
management science, and organizational development etc. (Easterby-Smith, 1997).
Table 1 summarizes different concepts and approaches to organizational learning
and learning organization. The table 1 clearly depicts the paradigm shift in styles and
approaches to learning in organization. Especially in and after the Senge (1990) who
proposed the concept of a learning organization and presented few disciplines that were
declared necessary conditions for learning to occur. Many others like McGill and Slocum
(1992), Goh (1998), Gephart and Marsick (1997) etc. also gave similar prescriptions for
learning in the organizations and identified and presented contextual factors that are
responsible for learning to occur. Coming paragraphs are dedicated to the discussion on
the frameworks of a learning organization. A table will be formed which will help the
researcher to extract the most important and common factors that can be called as
facilitating factors that cause learning to occur.
Learning organization is an HRD effort, and is considered an intervention for
organizational transformation within the domain of organizational development
(Desimone, Werner, & Harris, 2002).
Senge (2006) defines a learning organization as ―…organization that will truly
excel in the future will be the organization that discover how to tap people‘s commitment
and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization‖ (p.4). Senge (1990) declares that the
learning organization is the vehicle to maintain competitiveness in the 21 st century. These
COPY RIGHT © 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 258
JANUARY 2011
VOL 2, NO 9