Globalization

• Global Economy: Goods, services,

financial capital, people, skills, and ideas
move freely across geographic borders
• Globalization is the increasing economic
interdependence among countries
• Expands and complicates competitive
environment
• Interesting opportunities and challenges
 Globalization
• Increased performance standards
– Quality, cost, productivity, product introduction
time, operational efficiency
– Require continuous improvement from firm
and employees
– Companies improve capabilities and
employees sharpen skills
• Only firms meeting or exceeding global
standards earn strategic competitiveness
 Technology
• Perpetual innovation
• Shorter product life-cycles
• Products become indistinguishable due to
rapid technological diffusion
• Competitors can imitate
• Can overcome by alliances, acquisitions,
internal R&D
 Information Age
• Information easily available to large
population
• Ability to effectively and efficiently use
information is a source of competitive
advantage
• Knowledge (information, intelligence,
expertise) is the basis of technology and
its application
• Accumulated knowledge of employees is a
corporate asset
• Develop – training
• Acquire – hiring educated / experienced
 Why Learn?
• TQM (Total Quality Management) and BPR
(Business Process Reengineering) may be
inadequate
• Cope with rapid and unexpected changes where
existing 'programmed' responses are inadequate
• Provide flexibility to cope with dynamically
changing situations
• Allow front-line staff to respond with initiative
based on customer needs vs. being constrained
by business processes established for different
circumstances
 Learning organizations
• Learning organizations are those that have
in place systems, mechanisms and
processes, that are used to continually
enhance their capabilities and those who
work with it or for it, to achieve sustainable
objectives
• Organization with an ingrained philosophy
for anticipating, reacting and responding to
change, complexity and uncertainty
 Learning organizations
• Are adaptive to their external environment
• Continually enhance their capability to
change/adapt
• Develop collective as well as individual learning
• Use the results of learning to achieve better
results

 The rate at which organizations learn may

become the only sustainable source of
competitive advantage
 Learning Organization
• Ability to capture intelligence
• Transform it into usable knowledge
• Diffuse it rapidly in the organization
• Apply it to gain competitive advantage
 Adaptive Learning vs.
Generative Learning
• Adaptive learning or Single-loop learning
– focuses on solving problems in the present
without examining the appropriateness of
current learning behaviors
– Based on past experience
– Short term solutions, problems may reemerge
 Adaptive Learning vs.
Generative Learning
• Generative Learning or Double-loop learning
– continuous experimentation and feedback
– systemic thinking
– shared vision
– personal mastery
– team learning
– creative tension" (between the vision and the current
reality)
– frequent, nearly-continuous change in structures,
processes, domains, goals
– operating in this mode is efficacious, perhaps even
required, for survival in fast changing and
unpredictable environments
 Types of Learning
• Level 1.- Learning facts, knowledge, processes and
procedures. Applies to known situations where changes
are minor.
• Level 2.- Learning new job skills that are transferable to
other situations. Applies to new situations where existing
responses need to be changed. Bringing in outside
expertise is useful.
• Level 3 - Learning to adapt. Applies to more dynamic
situations where the solutions need developing.
Experimentation, and deriving lessons from success and
failure is the mode of learning here.
• Level 4 - Learning to learn. Is about innovation and
creativity; designing the future rather than merely adapting
to it. Assumptions are challenged and knowledge is
reframed.
 Characteristics of a Learning
Organization
• Learning Culture - an organizational climate that
nurtures learning. There is a strong similarity with those
characteristics associated with innovation.
• Processes - processes that encourage interaction
across boundaries. These are infrastructure,
development and management processes, as opposed
to business operational processes (the typical focus of
many BPR initiatives).
• Tools and Techniques - methods that aid individual and
group learning, such as creativity and problem solving
techniques.
• Skills and Motivation - to learn and adapt
 A Learning Culture
• Future, external orientation - these organizations
develop understanding of their environment; senior teams
take time out to think about the future. Widespread use of
external sources and advisors e.g. customers on planning
teams.
• Free exchange and flow of information - systems are in
place to ensure that expertise is available where it is
needed; individuals network extensively, crossing
organizational boundaries to develop their knowledge and
expertise.
• Commitment to learning, personal development -
support from top management; people at all levels
encouraged to learn regularly; learning is rewarded. Time
to think and learn (understanding, exploring, reflecting,
developing)
 A Learning Culture
• Valuing people - ideas, creativity and
"imaginative capabilities" are stimulated, made
use of and developed. Diversity is recognised as
a strength. Views can be challenged.
• Climate of openness and trust - individuals are
encouraged to develop ideas, to speak out, to
challenge actions.
• Learning from experience - learning from
mistakes is often more powerful than learning
from success. Failure is tolerated, provided
lessons are learnt
 Key Management Processes
• Strategic and Scenario Planning - approaches to planning
that go beyond the numbers, encourage challenging
assumptions, thinking 'outside of the box'. They also allocate
a proportion of resources for experimentation.
• Competitor Analysis - as part of a process of continuous
monitoring and analysis of all key factor in the external
environment, including technology and political factors. A
coherent competitor analysis process that gathers information
from multiple sources, sifts, analyses, refines, adds value and
redistributes is evidence that the appropriate mechanisms are
in place.
• Information and Knowledge Management - using
techniques to identify, audit, value (cost/benefit), develop and
exploit information as a resource (IRM - information resources
management); use of collaboration processes and groupware
to categorise and share expertise.
 Key Management Processes
• Capability Planning - profiling both qualitatively and
quantitatively the competencies of the organization. Profiling
these on a matrix can be helpful to planning adjustment
• Team and Organization development - the use of facilitators
to help groups with work, job and organization design and
team development - reinforcing values, developing vision,
cohesiveness and a climate of stretching goals, sharing and
support
• Performance Measurement - finding appropriate measures
and indicators of performance; ones that provide a 'balanced
scorecard' and encourage investment in learning.
• Reward and Recognition Systems - processes and systems
that recognize acquisition of new skills, team-work as well as
individual effort, celebrate successes and accomplishments,
and encourages continuous personal development.
 Tools and Techniques
• Inquiry - interviewing, seeking information
• Creativity - brainstorming, associating ideas
• Making sense of situations - organising
information and thoughts
• Making choices - deciding courses of action
• Observing outcomes - recording, observation
• Reframing knowledge - embedding new
knowledge into mental models, memorizing
 Inhibitors to becoming a Learning
Organization
• Operational/fire fighting preoccupation - not
creating time to sit back and think strategically
• Too focused on systems and process (e.g.
ISO9000) to exclusion of other factors
(bureaucratic vs. thinking)
• Too top-down driven, overtight supervision =
lack of real empowerment
• Reluctance to train (or invest in training), other
than for obvious immediate needs
• Feel threatened by change
 The Management Challenge
• Make effort to learn new skills and techniques
• Put in processes that engage workforce in
programmes of continuous capability
development.
• Learning should be integrated as part and parcel
of everyday work.
• It should also be energising, stimulating and fun.
• Getting the best out of everybody, including
yourself to meet the challenges ahead.
• Encourage, recognize, and reward openness,
systemic thinking, creativity
Relationship between Strategy and
Organizational Learning
• Planning as learning
• The key is not getting the right strategy but
fostering strategic thinking
• Think about implications of possible
scenarios, prepare for dramatic changes
and unpredictability
 Strategic Flexibility
• Set of capabilities used to respond to
various demands and opportunities
existing in a dynamic and uncertain
competitive environment
• Adapt quickly to changes
Role of Information Systems in the
Learning Organization
• Knowledge acquisition
• Information distribution
– Groupware tools, Intranets, E-mail, and Bulletin
Boards
• Information interpretation
• Organizational memory
– Archives
– continuously updated and refreshed
• Scenario planning tools can be used for
generating the possible futures
 Benefits of being a Learning
Organization
• Maintaining levels of innovation and remaining
competitive
• Being better placed to respond to external
pressures
• Having the knowledge to better link resources to
customer needs
• Improving quality of outputs at all levels
• Improving corporate image by becoming more
people orientated
• Increasing the pace of change within the
organization