Organizational learning, change and conflict

Summary:

There are 5 important concepts to take into account in order to understand this topic:

à Knowledge: is the acquisition of information that someone gain through experience, education or rational thoughts.

à Learning: is the action of acquiring new or modifying knowledge, behaviors, skills, values or preferences. Learning is the facility to infer different kind of information in order to progress over time tends.

à Information: is a number of processed data that create a message giving knowledge to a subject.

à Change: is a concept that refers to transition when something is moved from one condition to another.

à Conflict: is a struggle between two or more parties that creates a tension among them.

With the purpose of explain the behavior on the organizational learning we have some different theories:

1.    Classical Conditioning: it is that “when two things usually occur together, the appearance of one brings to mind the other”. This theory was founded by Ivan Pavlov, he made this after studying animals’ behavior and one of the bases was:

            EI ------- > RI = Dogs salivate naturally when they detect food.

            (EI: unconditioned or natural stimulus. RI: unconditioned response.)

2.    Operant Conditioning: It was developed by Burrhus Frederic Skinner. This theory is a type of associative learning that has to do with the development of new behaviors in terms of its consequences.

3.    Social learning Theory: It says that people learn new conducts by effort, punishment or just by seeing social factor in their environment, then if they see a positive consequence it is possible that they follow this conduct otherwise it is less possible that they take this as a model.

With the time people have created different kind of places or organizations to learn and expand the capacities to develop the society and population, these places are called learning organizations and have as goal to guide people and give them information that can improve their skills and criterions.

Learning organizations play an important role in business because they have developed different ways of conduction in order to enter and survive in external markets so quality of life is improving every day.

This kind of organization gives persons information and knowledge in different levels so they have to climb them until they can be considered as competent professionals to help the market.

Question:

What would be the relationship between cross cultural environments and organizational learning strategies?

Organizational learning needs to take into account the importance of cross cultural environment because they have to develop different ways of giving information depending on the society or group they are trying to enter.

Learning and information vary depending on customs and education so organizations should study the population and guide them to the main goal or what they really want.

Organizational learning strategies are created and developed to a specific group of people so the results can be different depending on the place, that’s why cultural environment is so important because the specialist has to study the communities’ procedures and signals in order to change or adapt the theory to that specific population.

What could have been an excellent way of acting or teaching in United States might not be as good in other countries and can create a conflict there.

Bibliography:

·         Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and the Literatures George P. Huber Organization Science Vol. 2, No. 1, Special Issue: Organizational Learning: Papers in Honor of (and by) James G. March (1991), pp. 88-115

·         Organizational Learning and Strategic Renewal Mary M. Crossan, Iris Berdrow Strategic Management Journal Vol. 24, No. 11 (Nov., 2003), pp. 1087-1105

·         A Market-Based Computational Approach to Collaborative Organizational Learning P. -S. Deng, E. G. Tsacle The Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 54, No. 9, Part Special Issue: Modelling Organizational Knowledge (Sep., 2003), pp. 924-935

·         The Local and Variegated Nature of Learning in Organizations: A Group-Level Perspective Amy C. Edmondson Organization Science Vol. 13, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2002), pp. 128-146

·         An Organizational Learning Model of Convergence and Reorientation Theresa K. Lant, Stephen J. Mezias Organization Science Vol. 3, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 47-71

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