Introduction
Organized learning principles, which have been discussed in varying forms since the 1940s, enhance an employee’s capacity to act, and help companies adapt quickly and set and achieve goals to remain competitive. The principles require companies to change their culture, challenge previously held assumptions, and eliminate the “we’ve always done it this way” approach. Employees in learning organizations are given a role in determining goals and must be able to communicate honestly, without being ridiculed.
Learning is the process of gaining knowledge or skills through experience or study. An organization is a group of people where individuals cooperate systematically for a purpose. A Learning Organization is one in which people freely and continually, individually and collectively, exchange information and creates processes that will expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. It stresses that organizations exist through collaboration, and that by working together people can accomplish things that they cannot do individually. A learning organization builds collaborative relationships in order to draw strength from the diverse knowledge, experience, capabilities, and ways of doing things that people and communities have and use.
Learning organizations have a lot of contribution towards long-term survival and profitability. This paper will assess how effective are the five disciplines in different and on different kind of workforce. Our study will be limited to the automotive industry.
Company Background
The organization under study is an automotive company which is a third party supplier of automotive interiors to all of the OEMs. It is a profit making unit though their two main competitors are much larger than them. Recently the company laid-off 50 white collar employees at the corporate office to remain competitive because annual volumes are much below the expected. The situation is worsened with the fact that the customers are unable to pay bills and with decreased workforce, there is an increase in work-load on the employees, which is creating problem for them to remain motivated to work. This study will try to ascertain the effective application of the learning organization theory and the effective use of the five disciplines on this company.
The company has two groups of employees, first the workers in the plant and the second are the executives in the corporate office. Downsizing has first hit the corporate office and which would definitely effect the whole organization.
Automotive Companies as Learning Organizations
Automobiles, at the turn of the century, quickly replaced the horse as the primary means of transportation. But by the early 1970s the U.S. auto industry faced increased global competition and increasing government regulation. American small car sales continued to slump. Technology developed has become an utmost priority in the purchasing decision of consumers. Japanese organizations like Toyota who have Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement which has created increased competition for American vehicles in the U.S. market.
The American automotive industry is changing. There is a new basic resource: information. It differs radically from all other commodities in that it is available in abundance. Information, as a competitive factor, is often available and utilized by everyone simultaneously in short-lived initiatives to be number one in the industry. An example in the auto industry is the difficulty encountered when trying to make a correct value-based decision. If business is to deliver value to the customer, how should it be define value? Value to the customer is always different from that which is a value or quality to the supplier. So customer data is gathered in the hope of identifying the elusive “value”. Management must somehow define value and the results it expects based on customer values, and then organize the resources of the institution to attain those results.
Learning Dilemma in Automotive Industry
Learning disabilities in the automotive industry was apparent in the sixties and seventies. The industry was complacent to the environmental needs. To be more specific the automobile industry had all the symptoms stated by Senge for learning disabilities to occur. For instance in American companies where three managers did a job, in a Japanese organization one manager handled the same operation. They were too busy looking and pointing at the enemy rather than finding their own system failures. They failed to see long term patterns of change. Niche markets were becoming the dominant focus of American automotive companies. A “something for everybody” approach to doing business has created so much variation in the product that car companies have had a tough time defining those expectations and orchestrating their resources in the global marketplace over the last 25 years. General Motors is a good example, illustrated by the decline in its dominance of the North American automobile market, plummeting from roughly 60 percent to less than 30 percent. But once identified, the changes initiated by an organization to meet those expectations drive structural and process changes that ultimately affect the individual, and the individual’s skills and understanding of the business.
Structure Influencing Behavior
As Senge states, “When placed in the same system, people however different, tend to produce similar results.” (42) The structure that Senge proposes is the ‘systematic’ structure where there exist interrelationships between key variables such as technology or managerial know-how, natural resources, population, etc. According to Senge, structures create patterns of behavior as in case of the automobile industry.
The auto industry needs to learn to run their business differently. Starting with a short-term focus of a “lean” or “downsized” organization, companies are dumping employees to streamline processes and reduce redundancies. Some companies, in an effort to zero-in on their core business and reduce costs have also outsourced whole departments. In most cases it also represents “doing more with less.” This common theme includes three key elements: lowered costs; improved quality; and reduced time to market.
From the individual’s perspective most “right sizing” initiatives create a sense of frustration and a perceived loss of control. It means a significant restructuring of work and more of it. The lucky survivors of corporate restructuring often find that they now have the responsibilities that, figuratively speaking, previously belonged to three people. Or, continued employment may mean learning new skills, in a new assignment, with a new department or team. Change then, is something done to us, not something that we seek or are comfortable with.
Systems Thinking and Automotive Companies
The fifth discipline of Senge’s five disciplines of a learning organization is systems thinking. It is focusing on understanding the functioning of complex systems; their causal chains and time delays; understanding complex interactions and seeing the forest from the trees.
Laws of the Fifth Discipline
Senge lists eleven laws that characterize systems thinking and the fundamental ideas behind it. These are today’s problem’s come from yesterday’s “solutions”, the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back, behavior grows better before it grows worse, the easy way out usually leads back in, the cure can be worse than the disease, faster is slower, cause and effect are not closely related in time and space, small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious, you can have your cake and eat it too – but not at once, dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants, and there is no blame.
The automotive industry was experiencing growth and they wanted faster growth initially and were blind to the approaching Japanese competition. Hence their speed of growth went down from “faster to slower”. But the industry participated in a blame game wherein they blamed right from the high gas prices, increased Asian competition and health related problems. The more the automotive companies tried to push their reactive stances the more dilapidated their condition became. For instance, the case of General Motors and Ford’s massive restructuring when the sales were still strong hobbled by a shrinking domestic market share, plunging profits, and the high wages and generous health benefits promised to their existing and former workers. Clearly, “The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.”
This also shows, what the companies wanted to be a cure, had turned out to be worse than the disease. What the automotive companies should do is find the misfit component in their own system rather than engaging in taking up aggressive strategies against competitors wherein the competitor too will retaliate and the outcome will not be beneficiary for the industry especially when they are at ta disadvantage of inexorable rise of the fuel-efficient, gas-electric hybrid and America’s waning love affair with the sports utility vehicle, or SUV – at one time Detroit’s cash cow, but after a year or so of high gasoline prices reviled as a symbol of America’s gas-guzzling car culture. So essentially there should be a ‘shift of mind’ in the approach of the automotive industry. Moreover, according to Senge, the best results come not from large-scale efforts but from small well-focused actions. Hence the automotive industry should concentrate on repairing symptoms is an example of a low-leverage action; it would be better to cure the cause and have a high leverage in the long run.
Feedback
Feedback is defined as the transmission and return of information. The reason for emphasizing feedback is that it is often necessary to consider feedback within management systems to understand what is causing the patterns of behavior. That is, the causes of an observed pattern of behavior are often found within the feedback structures for a management system. A reinforcing loop is one in which the interactions are such that each action adds to the other. Any situation where action produces a result which promotes more of the same action is representative of a reinforcing loop. A balancing loop is one in which action attempts to bring two things to agreement. Any situation where one attempts to solve a problem or achieve a goal or objective is representative of a balancing loop.
Similar situation arose in the automotive industry when the gas prices went up, and the Japanese competition become strong in the U.S. market, it slackened the market share of the American automotive industry. But there were problems already existing in the system of the companies. General Motors illustrates the issue. For over half a century, GM dominated the automotive industry. GM’s difficulties did not come from a lightning attack by Japanese auto manufacturers. GM had a couple of decades to adapt, but today it is still attempting to find a way to its former dominance, more than three decades after the start of Japanese automobile importation. During this period, many of GM’s employees and managers have turned over, but the company still has difficulty adjusting. There seems to be something about the way that GM is put together that makes its behavior hard to change.
Personal Mastery
Personal mastery can be seen as the cornerstone of Senge’s (1990) five disciplines for the learning organization. Even though learning takes place at the individual, the team and the organizational level, it always starts with the individual (Senge 1990). In order to learn, individuals must practise the discipline of personal mastery, which is “the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively” (Senge, 1990, p. 7). For somebody who has already had a formal education and has decided on a career path this is a lot to ask. Learning and change in individuals require involvement. What is more, their personal drive and vision is already developed – outside work.
A closer look at personal mastery reveals that in practising the discipline, individuals continuously deepen their understanding of themselves and expand their own ability to reach their desired vision (Senge 1990). In other words, personal mastery extends beyond the organization. People, who have decided that they are not interested in certain demanding initiatives or jobs, like the case in the company under study, all have visions or ideas that motivate them. They understand themselves and might therefore know better than anybody else what it means to use the creative tension in holding a clear image of one’s current stage up against one’s vision (Senge, 1990). Considering the de-motivated employees who have to put in extra work for the same salary due to downsizing is supported by Senge’s (1999, p. 46-47) belief that personal needs and goals are necessarily in opposition to business needs.
Conclusion
To conclude we may say that the automotive industry is essentially facing a problem which more internal rather than external. To solve these problems aggressive retaliation to competitors will not solve their problem, rather escalate it. So they need to introspect and find the misfit in their own system and then change it. they need to find a long-term goal which will help them to leverage their competitive advantage rather than blindly aping their competitors. As Peter Senge describes, a “learning organization” is one that continually expands its capability to create its future. For such an organization, it is not enough merely to survive. “Survival learning” or what is more often termed “adaptive learning” is important – indeed it is necessary. But for a learning organization, “adaptive learning” must be joined by “generative learning,” learning that enhances our capacity to create.
Reference
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Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. New York, NY: Doubleday Currency,
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Senge, P. M., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., Smith, B. J. & Kleiner, A. (1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, New York, Doubleday Currency.
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