An Evaluation of Employees' Competence Towards the Development of a Learning Organization

Introduction

In the era of rapid advancements in technology, global competition, market complexity, financial instability, and economic conditions, the organizations are undergoing consecutive changes in the business environment (Sakas, Vlachos, & Nasiopoulos, 2014). To deal with business instability and focus on achieving quality performance and sustainable competitiveness, organizations need to continuously create and integrate new knowledge and adopt learning organization model for their business processes (Fang & Wang, 2006). In pursuit of enhanced individual performance, the organizations need to maintain the employees’ job satisfaction level as high as possible (Dirani, 2009). Learning is an essential part of the innovative process which is also an integral part of creating an environment that facilitates evolutionary sustainability of the organization. A learning organization is an institution which has the skills to change the behaviour to form new information and understanding through the creation, gathering and transfer of information based on a continuous learning cycle.

The most successful companies are learning organizations that constitute the ability to learn faster than competitors to have a sustainable advantage in the market. Therefore, a learning organization would manifest itself in an excellent performance, given that this must be a key area of competitive advantage. Senge's (2006) approach to the concept of a learning organization is built on five inter-related dimensions that are considered vital to building organizations that can truly learn. These dimensions are referred to as the Five Disciplines of the learning organization. These disciplines are development paths to great proficiency and convergence of these disciplines create a learning organization (Senge 1996). The disciplines are like mental models, personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. The five disciplines have remained as the core elements of the learning organization.

The impression of learning organization was promoted by Pedler, Burgoyne, & Boydell (1997) from the European perspective and stated that there has been a shift within the field away from looking at the learning organization as the ‘panacea’ for any organizational development, towards a more realistic emphasis on the process of learning organization. For the purpose, eleven characteristics of learning organizations are identified. These are learning approach to strategy, informative, participative policymaking, internal exchange, formative accounting and control, enabling structures, reward flexibility, inter-company learning, boundary workers as environmental scanners, a learning climate, and self-development opportunities for all. A blueprint was developed for the modelling of a learning organization grouping the eleven elements into the clusters such as strategy, structures, looking in, looking out, and learning opportunities. The business units focusing on the development of employees’ competence are those with learning capacity and passion. Learning organizations encourage self-organization and are an indispensable part of the innovative process which is also an integral part of creating an environment that facilitates evolutionary sustainability.

Watkins & Marsick (2003) viewed the learning organization as an integrative model where learning is a continuous process, used strategically, and is integrated with overall work processes. This learning organization model integrates both structure and people as the companies are focusing on leveraging learning on several levels like the individual, team and organizational learning. Örtenblad (2002) developed a typology of the idea with four types of understandings of the learning organization concept. The first is the old learning organization perspective which focuses on the storage of knowledge in the organizational mind. The second is the learning at work perspective which sees a learning organization as an organization where individuals learn at the workplace. The third is the learning climate perspective, which perceives the learning organization as one that facilitates the learning of its employees and the fourth is the learning structure perspective, which regards the learning organization as a flexible entity (Örtenblad & Koris, 2014).