Of late scientists, management scholars have become interested on the benefits that organizational learning has on an organization; they are of the agreement that an organization that constantly coaches, trains, mentors and counsels its employees is likely to have an edge of competitiveness in every phase of business (Hornsby and Warkeoczeski, 2000).
Learning in an organization improves employees’ productivity; it increases the personnel expertise, which in turn keeps a company competitive; however, learning faces a number of challenges. This paper analyzes the major impediments to effective organizational learning (OL).
Barriers to an effective OL
Barriers to an effective OL are factors that hinder the implementation of OL programs within an organization or they at least interfere with the practicability of the set programs; they impede the implementation of the change that learning is likely to bring out.
Organizational culture is the first impediment of OL if it has not been well managed; an organization with a negative organizational culture is likely to see a learning process as a disruption of the organizational status quo and is likely to repel against it.
In most case, organization learning comes with a change that the organization will go through, if the organizational culture adopted in an organization does not support a change process, then learning in such organization is difficult.
Another hindrance of organizational culture is an organization politics; in every organization, some internal politics that determine how things are done; these politic are not formal however, they have the ability to create attitude, perceptions and behavior within an organization. If the politics of an organization are not positive to learning, then the process is likely not to be successful (Schilling and Kluge, 2009).
Leadership within an organization plays a crucial role in the success of OL, leaders are seen as the pioneers of OL and they are constantly undertaking the process. When a company’s leadership is not effective and lack the expertise and knowledge to pioneer OL, the external processes are likely to influence the change.
Different employees understand things differently; leaders should be sensitive enough to know the kind of employees that they have then come up with the right approach.
In most cases, especially when it comes to training, the entire human capital cannot undergo the training since it might be very expensive to the company; however, some few employees are trained, and expected to diffuse the information and knowledge attained to other people.
The external environment that a company is operating in is likelihood impendent of organizational culture; the external environment includes competitors, the culture of the people around and organization and the relationship that prevail between people and the organization. Organizations need to recognize that external factors/forces affect learning and knowledge development in the organization.
To ensure that the effect is not negative, an organization needs to have good relationship with the external environment. To create good environment, a company need to be ethical in its processes and adopt corporate social responsibility activities; this will enhance the relationship that the company have with the external environment (Meinolf, Ariane, John and Ikujiro, 2003)
Conclusion
The success of organizational learning is hindered by internal and external factors facing an organization if the factors are not managed appropriately. The internal factors include organizational culture, organizational politics, leadership and informal team in the organization. The external factors likely to hinder organizational learning are corporate governance and culture of stakeholders, customers and the public.
References
Hornsby, T. and Warkeoczeski, L. 2000. New roles for leaders: A step-by-step guide to competitive advantage. Franklin: Hillsboro Press.
Meinolf, D., Ariane, A., John, C. and Ikujiro, N.,2003. Handbook of Organisational Learning and Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schilling, J. and Kluge, A.,2009. Barriers to organizational learning: An integration of theory and research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 11(3), pp. 337–360