Mgt 501 Mod 3 Case

Module 3 Case

Organizations as Brains

Alex Keller

11/21/2010

As defined by Wikipedia, a learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. Learning organizations are characterized by total employee involvement in a process that ultimately leads to the betterment of the organization. This is not something that can be achieved by one employee, but as the entire organization. It also breaks down the hierarchy of a traditional authoritarian workplace and individual potential is rewarded. These organizations foster an environment where people can create the results they desire and where employees can learn together for the betterment of the whole.

A learning organization is not just a sum of knowledge of individuals but an organization that has a set of ideals in which individuals make better through their own initiatives and ideas. The most important thing in a successful organization is a vision of where the leadership would like to take the company and a general plan of how to get there. The learning organization part is how individual ideas of each employee follow that general plan in order to make the company successful.

Organizations are made of many different networks each having their own specialty and focus all with the same goal. One of the best examples I can think of is the functional setup of organizations. Each person is split into a specialty bucket, be it finance, management, contracting, or support. This both helps and hampers the learning organization. The first way that it helps the organization is that it allows for many different ideas from different specialties, finance people are focused on money, while management is focused on the success of a program. Each idea will have its own goal and will bring up its own points. The downside of these individual networks is the possibility of groupthink forming within each network. There often...