Cultivating a learning culture in the US Navy

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Cavallaro ◽  
William J. Nault
Keyword(s):  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Learning Culture ◽  
Cultural Barriers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Learning Cultures ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Navy ◽  
Security Organizations

Purpose This paper aims to explore the cultivation of a learning culture in the US Navy (USN). The intent of preparing and sharing this research is to reveal the particular challenges of developing learning organization capability in national security organizations. This paper believes this effort will contribute to the evolution and establishment of learning organization models that are replicable across and adaptable to distinct industrial settings. Design/methodology/approach Several efforts were explored and assessed by applying relevant research in the learning organization literature to trends in current organizational practice within the USN. Findings Recent USN learning culture efforts align with the broader, multi-sector, global trend toward building learning organizations to develop people as a source of competitive advantage. This research reveals the trials of enabling learning organizations across large, hierarchical bureaucracies with substantial structural and cultural barriers. The myriad obstacles currently being addressed by the USN, both at an institutional level and at smaller organization and unit levels, can inform the development of learning cultures. In particular, this research highlights the need to align specific efforts to the appropriate level of the organization. Originality/value This paper contributes to the learning organization conversation by examining the associated challenges through a multi-level framework – top, middle and bottom.

Higher educational institutes as learning organizations for employer branding

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
USHA LENKA ◽  
SANIYA CHAWLA
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Learning Culture ◽  
Continuous Learning ◽  
Total Quality ◽  
Open Communication ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Academic Literature

Purpose – Contemporary organizations emphasize upon continuous learning to be able to face the environmental dynamism and further build a learning organization. The purpose of this paper is to reflect the conceptual framework of learning organization, integrating variables at individual, team, and organizational levels. Design/methodology/approach – The framework has been devised through the review of literature from 1950s to 2014 using the databases of EBSCO, Emerald, Proquest, Science Direct, and Scopus to ensure the reliability. Findings – The variables are resonant leadership style, knowledge management, intrapreneurship, total quality management (TQM), and supportive learning culture. Resonant leaders are emotionally intelligent leaders who evoke positive emotions among their subordinates through setting an example, ensuring mindfulness, hope, and compassion. Knowledge management is basically creating, transferring, maintaining, and organizing knowledge in organizational repositories. Intrapreneurship is the initiative and risk taken by the employees. TQM is a management practice that promotes total involvement, continuous improvement, and reflexive decisions taken by team members. Supportive learning culture pushes individuals toward a common goal, which is further facilitated, by open communication, affective and cognitive trust, and organic structure. These factors pose as enablers to foster continuous learning among employees. A learning organization, therefore, can establish a strong employer brand by enhancing employees’ emotional attachment and further aides’ attraction and retention of talent. Originality/value – So far, all these important variables have been ignored in the academic literature especially in the context of educational institutes as learning organizations. Also, there is a void in academic literature with respect to integrated model of learning organization. In this way, the paper tries to fill the gap by developing a conceptual framework of learning organization, followed by discussion and managerial implications.

Indonesia will avoid economic crisis

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Federal Reserve ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Current Account Deficit ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Finance Minister ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
The Us

Subject Indonesia's economic headwinds. Significance Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati last week said the US Federal Reserve (Fed) should be careful about how its policies affect emerging markets. Tightening US monetary policy and a global trend of trade protectionism is straining Indonesia’s currency and current account deficit. President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo will be eager to demonstrate that he can handle Indonesia’s economic challenges ahead of the presidential election in April 2019. Impacts Sri Mulyani’s message to the Fed is unlikely to have much traction in Washington. The force of economic nationalism will hinder Indonesia’s efforts to court more foreign direct investment. US trade reprisals on Indonesia would damage Washington-Jakarta diplomatic ties.

The dialectical development of “storytelling” learning organizations

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 226-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Cai Hillon ◽  
David M. Boje
Keyword(s):  
Learning Organization ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Research University ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Model Development ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Narrative Development ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Counter Narrative

Purpose Calls for dialectical learning process model development in learning organizations have largely gone unheeded, thereby limiting conceptual understanding and application in the field. This paper aims to unify learning organization theory with a new understanding of Hegelian dialectics to trace the development of the storytelling learning organization. The “storytelling learning organization” is a conceptual framework presented along with criteria to evaluate different kinds of dialectical development claims in “storytelling learning organization” work that are bona fide instances of one or another dialectical ontology ranging from Marxian, to Hegelian, to Brierian, to Žižekian. Design/methodology/approach Ontological evaluation and critique of a variety of “storytelling learning organization” practices posit different dialectical ontology and consequences for theory and practice. Through a case example of business process reengineering (BPR) in a “public research university (PRU)”, the storytelling of “schooling” versus “education” ideas and practices, in a place, in a period and in material ways of mattering, never achieves synthesis. The dialectical development of resistance to implementation evolves toward transcendence into irreducible oppositions of ontological incompleteness – the essence of a learning organization. Findings This ontological analysis focuses on the use of ideas and practices by opposing storytelling agents and actants to uncover a learning organization’s dialectical development in its own storytelling, its narrative and counter-narrative enactments, and its attempts to unpack contradictions. The PRU under study has gone through a series of financial crises, and its learning organization responses were downsizing staff and faculty positions and implementing BPR in ways that worsened the situation. The process resulted in staff and faculty leaving even before the reorganization was completed and enrollment dropped dramatically, in great part due to the negative press and the excessive standardization of the curriculum that accompanies “schooling” displacing acts of “education” practices and ideations. Meanwhile, the administrators are still trying to manage the narrative and control it so as to forestall additional attrition. Originality/value The theory of “storytelling learning organization” is original. The question answered here has practical value because institutions have choices to make concerning the kind of dialectical narrative and counter-narrative development that is cultivated, and there are options for transforming or moving to an alternative narrative and counter-narrative development process. The analysis of the case also illustrates a pattern of intervention that is, on the one hand, unsuccessful in developing “higher” education and, on the other hand, successful in shutting down the efficacy of a PRU by centrist use of reengineering to accomplish more schooling, more downsizing and more installation of “academic capitalism” ideas and practices.

From Learning Organizations to Learning Cultures and More: Evolutions in Theory, Changes in Practice, Continuity of Purpose

2019 ◽  
pp. 214-228
Author(s):  
Anthony J. DiBella
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Organizational Effectiveness ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Organizational Transformation ◽  
Learning Culture ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Organization Learning ◽  
Learning Cultures ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines the evolution of concepts pertaining to the criticality of learning in the pursuit of organizational transformation and effectiveness. Over time, the popularity of the learning organization, learning portfolios, learning cultures, and organizational reliability has waned. Some scholars have considered these concepts within a descriptive perspective, others in a prescriptive manner. This chapter does not advocate for one perspective or paradigm over another but promotes awareness of their distinctions and how they offer different frames for comparing “organizational learning” versus the “learning organization” and “learning culture.” While scholars and practitioners are all concerned with organizational effectiveness, they point towards it in unique ways using conceptual labels that can be interpreted in diverse fashions. That often contributes to intellectual churn and further evolutions in conceptual development and popularity. Implications for the morality of learning processes and their benefit to society are considered.

Providing strategic leadership for learning: optimizing managerial coaching to build learning organizations

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea D. Ellinger ◽  
Alexander E. Ellinger
Keyword(s):  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Performance Outcomes ◽  
Strategic Leadership ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Managerial Coaching ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Leadership For Learning ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Highly Correlated

Purpose The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this Special Issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that “leaders mentor and coach those they lead” is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ©) that is most highly correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that “future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization.” In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ© instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts. Findings Existing literature suggests that “provide strategic leadership for learning”, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, “leaders who mentor and coach” has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning. Originality/value The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

Schools as learning organizations

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 1106-1115
Author(s):  
Laurie Field
Keyword(s):  
Learning Organization ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
The Political ◽  
Educational Improvement ◽  
Content Type ◽  
First Time ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the desirability and attainability of schools becoming learning organizations. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a critical analysis based on a wide-ranging review of the “schools as learning organizations” literature. Findings The notion of learning organization applied to schools is fundamentally flawed. Most notably, schools as learning organizations are conceptualized in so many different ways that it is possible to claim almost anything; the political aspects of shared learning are inadequately handled; and poor quality scholarship is commonplace. Practical implications There are repeated claims in the educational improvement literature that that there are significant benefits for schools that become learning organizations and, as a result, school leaders should steer schools in this direction. However, this paper critically challenges these claims, concluding instead that schools and their leaders should ignore calls to become learning organizations. Originality/value Many scholars, together with agencies such as the OECD, have suggested that, for schools, the learning organization is both a desirable goal and an achievable endpoint. The value of this paper is that, for the first time, these claims are subjected to a comprehensive critical review, revealing them to be hollow rhetoric rather than attainable reality.

Improvement opportunities for learning organizations

2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Learning Culture ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Opportunities For Learning ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Different Levels

Purpose Scope for learning to occur at different levels can increase when firms develop a learning culture. Such organizations are able to identify valuable opportunities by exploiting unique characteristics of different contexts that can facilitate learning. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Scope for learning to occur at different levels can increase when firms develop a learning culture. Such organizations are able to identify valuable opportunities by exploiting unique characteristics of different contexts that can facilitate learning. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Gaps and progress in our knowledge of learning organizations

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 444-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis D. Tuggle
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Research Themes ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Conceptual Study

Purpose This study aims to review previously published issues of The Learning Organization (TLO) to assess what progress has been made since the journal started in terms of what is known about learning organizations. The author also aims to identify important gaps in what is still to be discovered about organizations that learn, partly to single out promising areas to be investigated. Design/methodology/approach The author reviews all the previously published articles in the first 20 volumes printed and reviews each issue in each volume. The author classifies the methodology undertaken by each published article as being one of the following: a conceptual study, a case study or the analysis of other data. Keywords are assessed to get insights into the shifts in research themes pursued over the years. Findings There has been a substantial increase in the number of published papers over time. The number and percentage of articles that are conceptual in nature has declined somewhat over the years. The number and percentage of articles that involve case studies has increased over the years. The number and percentage of articles that involve analyzing data has increased significantly over the years. There has been a significant shift in research focus away from topics such as management and organizational development to topics such as knowledge management and social networks. Three major areas of gaps in our knowledge of learning organizations are identified: what it means to be a learning organization, how effective are learning organizations and what contextual factors influence learning organizations. Research limitations/implications Although other journals occasionally publish research on learning organizations, attention in this paper is solely focused upon TLO. Practical implications Addressing some of the research questions identified should provide insights that will assist practicing managers. Originality/value Although not a meta analysis of this journal’s research, the author presents a “thematic analysis” of research published in this journal, and the results and insights should prove interesting and useful to scholars in the field seeking rich areas to study.

Universities as inclusive learning organizations for women?

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Gouthro ◽  
Nancy Taber ◽  
Amanda Brazil
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Organizations ◽  
Education Sector ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Inclusive Learning ◽  
Academic Faculty ◽  
Critical Feminist ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of the learning organization, first discussed by Senge (1990), to determine if it can work as a model in the higher education sector. Design/methodology/approach Using a critical feminist framework, this paper assesses the possibilities and challenges of viewing universities as inclusive learning organizations, with a particular focus on women in academic faculty and leadership roles. Findings It argues that, ultimately, the impact of neoliberal values and underlying systemic structures that privilege male scholars need to be challenged through shifts in policies and practices to address ongoing issues of gender inequality in higher education. Originality/value The paper draws attention to the need to bring a critical feminist lens to an analysis of the concept of the learning organization if it is to be perceived as having merit in the higher education sector.

Creative climate and learning organization factors: their contribution towards innovation

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (8) ◽  
pp. 639-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meriam Ismail
Keyword(s):  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Culture ◽  
Organization Culture ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Private Organizations ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Creative Climate ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Job Levels ◽  
Post Hoc

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the effects of two independent variables, creative climate and learning organization, on innovation separately and simultaneously.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology used was multiple regression analysis executed on the data collected. Apart from that, the study also used T‐tests to compare the means of variables between the randomly selected local organization and MNCs. ANOVA was also conducted to compare the means of the variables between three different employee categories of job levels, namely the top, middle/lower management and supporting staff.FindingsThe results indicated that both learning culture and creative climate contributed 58.5 percent to the explanation of the observed variances in the innovation construct. The learning organization culture separately was found to have a significantly stronger relationship with innovation (r=0.733) than did the organizational creative climate (r=0.473). This implied a larger contribution from the learning organization variable towards innovation. The findings also showed that there were no significant differences in the mean scores (P>0.05) among the three organizational job levels included, namely the top management, middle/lower management and staff, in the members' perceptions of innovation, creative climate and learning culture. The study also found no significant differences in the mean scores (P>0.05) among the small, medium, large and very large organizational population sizes in the members' perceptions on innovation, creative climate and learning culture.Originality/valueThe study involved a sample of 18 private organizations selected at random from a list of 165 organizations across various core businesses. The instrument used for innovation is developed by the researcher, validated by post hoc factor analysis involving 259 respondents.

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