Introduction
Learning in an organization is one of the most important aspects if the organization will make any meaningful achievement in achieving their mission and vision statements. Employees are the most important investment of any organization and their roles as employees can only be achieved if the organization has effective mechanisms of ensuring effective and efficient learning processes are in place for their employees.
Learning in some organization especially tertiary education organizations is of utmost importance due to the dynamism of the education system. The organization and its employees must learn effectively for them to achieve their goals as educators. This paper discusses the learning process of the employees in terms of how it occurs, the learning styles and their effectiveness. It also covers the concept of explicit and tactic learning and lastly the formal and the informal ways employees learn about their jobs, the organization and its culture.
How learning occurs in National University of Singapore
The process of learning in any organization is believed to be a multi-factorial concept in the fact that there are different factors involved in the process. The way employees learn depends on many factors some of which include the management, environment, administration, the employees themselves and many other factors.Draft claims that learning in an organization is important
Learning organization promotes communication and collaboration so that everyone is engaged in identifying and solving problems, enabling the organization to continuously experiment, improve, and increase its capability. (Draft 9)
Learning encompasses the scientific knowledge, cultural aspect of the organization, personal knowledge and the shared commonness.
Systems thinking
This type of learning calls for the employees and the management to visualize events and occurrences at the global perspective and not as isolated events. The employees need to think of the whole organization as a dependent network with one action having the potential to affect the others. At National University of Singapore (NUS), the employees learn through the interrelated network of events and interpret the events in a way that they are likely to influence other events (Marquardt, 1996, p.5; Raffael, n.d. p.1).
Personal Mastery
Perhaps this is the type of learning that is most effective when it comes to the individual level. It is believed that through continuous exposure to the work environment the employees continuously learn more about how to improve on their efficiency and effectiveness of their services as employees (Marquardt, 1996, p.5).
Through experience people learn more about the organization as a whole and also learn about better ways of doing their job such that the whole organization benefits the most. At NUS employees are usually assigned specific posts which they hold for enough time such that the experience gained at personal and organization level is of both personal and organization benefit (Karash, 2002, p. 1).
Mental Models
This type of learning occurs through personal reflection of how the whole organization works. Different individuals have different perceptions and opinions of the culture of the organization and the working system. Different employees in NUS have different opinions, beliefs and interpretation of the mission, vision and the culture of the whole institution (Malhotra, 2011, p.1).
Thus learning for the employees becomes somewhat focused on personal perception and this may be attributed to the different opinions that are usually generated at the suggestion box, seminars, employees workshops and the whole management at large (Kolb, 1984, p.2)
Team Learning
It is argued that all the other models and methods of learning cannot be effective if team learning in an organization does not take place. It is believed that the success of any organization depends on the overall contribution of the management and all the employees.
Working together as a team may not materialize unless the whole team thinks and moves as a single unified unit. This can be seen in the way the whole management and the employee fraternity of NUS work together as a team in realizing the vision of the university (Smith, 2001, p. 1; Greenagel, n.d, p.1).
How individual learning styles affect the effectiveness of learning opportunities
It can generally be argued that unless the organization integrates its learning process with the individual learning styles there can never be any meaningful learning in the organization. According to Kolb there are four major learning styles at the individual level in which he classified people as divergers, convergers, accommodators or assimilators (Mitleton,n.d, p.39).
Divergerse
According to Kolb diverger individuals learn through the daily experiences in the workplace. Divergers look at the experiences and reflect about them deeply thus diverging from personal experience to all the available outcomes. Divergers are believed to look at situations from all the possible perspectives and generate their own views and ideas.
They are arguably the best kind of people when it comes to critical thinking especially in a brainstorming boardroom meeting. Kolb claims that divergers are usually “interested in people and tend to be imaginative and emotional (Kolb, 1984, p. 2). He further claims that divergers “tend to be interested in the arts and often have humanities or liberal arts backgrounds; Counselors, organizational development specialists, and personnel managers tend to be characterized by this learning style” (Kolb, 1984, p. 2).
From these observations it can be argued that it is very necessary for any organization to understand divergers and try to change or adapt their organization learning opportunities to optimize on divergers. A report by changing minds also shares the same sentiments “design learning for the people you are working with. If you cannot customize the design for specific people, use varied styles of delivery to help everyone learn” (Changing Minds, 2011, p.1).
Divergers are likely to interfere with the team learning provided by the institution since they are likely to create their own personal interpretation of the team learning process instead of adapting to the teamwork spirit of learning (Cheryl, n.d, p.1). However divergers are most likely to benefit the institution in terms of application of the experiences they go through to generate new and more effective ways and systems of doing things in the organization. NUS facilitate teamwork learning which divergers may not benefit (Maricopa, 1997, p. 1).
Effectiveness of the learning opportunities as a Diverger
The learning process at (NUS) encompasses of learning through personal experiences at work, teamwork learning, collective thinking as an organization and systems thinking. As a diverger these methods of learning were very effective to me since my mode of learning about things involves more of learning from personal or organization experiences and generating generalized probable outcomes and how they either affect the institution as a whole or how the experience relates to other aspects of the institution.
Processes and structures facilitating individual and group learning
NUS has well outlaid processes and structures to facilitate both individual and group learning. NUS believes in specialization whereby each individual is assigned tasks according to qualifications and expertise. This allows each individual to gain mastery of their own workstation and also gives them the opportunity to relate the personal experience at workplace with the overall learning of the organization. Incentives, trainings, rewards and capacity building are always provided to facilitate individual learning (Farago, 1995, p.1).
Group learning is also accommodated in the institution in that different departments are supposed to interact and also different levels of organization and management are supposed to liaise with one another for effective learning and implementation of the learned concepts towards achieving goals and objectives of the institution.
The organization ensures that different mechanisms are in place to ensure that the learning occurred in a given level of management, or department is integrated with the learning in the individual level for the benefit of the organization (Abell,2006, p.86).
Explicit and tactic learning processes
Tactic learning occurs mostly at the individual level whereby learning is mostly driven by the internal factors such as the personal learning processes. Whereas learning through explicit instruction occurs through external influences. Smith believes that “implicit learning is more robust and more durable than explicitly mastered skills and beliefs” (Smith, 2001, p.1) although both modes of learning are equally important in any organization (Mason, 2011, p. 1).
Conclusion
The process of learning in an organization is a key determinant of the success of the organization. Different individuals have different learning modes and this affects the effectiveness of the learning opportunities in an institution. The organization has the obligation to integrate the different learning opportunities thy offer with the learning modes of the employees. Both explicit and tactic learning processes are important in an organization and both should be considered for effective learning.
References
Abell, N. (2006) Organization theory: an interdisciplinary approach. Web.
Bessant, T. (2007) Innovation and Entrepreneurship. John Wiley and Sons.
Changing Minds. (2011) Kolb’s learning styles. Web.
Cheryl, L. Learning & Innovation in Communities of Practice. Web.
Draft. (2009) Organization Theory and Design. New York: Cengage Learning.
Farago, S. (1995) The Learning Organization. Web.
Greenagel, M. Lead Balloons, Stone Canoes, and Learning Styles in the Internet Age. Web.
Karash. (2002) Learning-Org Dialog on Learning Organizations. Web.
Kolb, D. (1984) Kolb Learning Style Inventory. Web.
Malhotra, V. (2011) Organizational Learning and Learning Organizations: An Overview. Web.
Maricopa. (1997) Learning is fundamentally Personal, Yet Social. Web.
Marquardt. (1996) Building the Learning Organization. Web.
Mason. (2011) What is a Learning Organization? Web.
Mitleton, K. What are the Characteristics of a Learning Organization. New York, NY: Cengage.
Raffael, L. What’s The Boundary Between Tacit And Explicit Knowledge? Web.
Smith, A. (2001) Peter senge and the learning organization. Web.
Smith, B. (2001) The learning organization. Web.