“If the challenge of the past has been to ‘get organized’, the challenge of the future is to find ways in which we can remain open to continuous self-organization: so that we can adapt and evolve as we go along”[1] Learning in the context of organization, development practices help mould workers to accept greater responsibility and provide opportunities for advancements. This development can be achieved through learning. Learning is the crux of every organization. Learning enables employees to reach the level of self actualization, through be ambitious and achieve their goals. Learning helps transform individual in a way that they may gain the ability to change the context in which they perceive themselves and create new contexts. Learning tends to be transformative and at times emancipative. Its is by means of learning we acquire new knowledge, skill set and attitude modification that will enable us to function and perform future tasks efficiently and effectively opening up avenues of choices personally and professionally.
Learning can therefore be summarized as the means of contribution in the development of individuals and organizations on the whole. Also it provides a means for individuals to enhance their tenure in an impactfull which willbenefit theorganization and society on the whole. It is for these and many other reasons that learning and its process along with developments are key elements for organizations in this age.
Basically learning and development in context with the field of management research and practice is when individuals seek to acquire or establish knowledge and skills which may assist in growth in a future occupational role. Development on the other hand is an increase in the over all capacity that in individual perceives to function more efficiently and a fulfilling personal and professional life as the final output of learning and development, acquisition of skills and attitudes. It tends to be a directional shift towards a better state to be eagerly concerned with an outcome. Development in the context of learning and development should be distinctive from development is a purely biological maturing. Development usually occurs as an outcome of learning and tends to happen in various modes. For example through formal training events or means of teaching, coaching, mentoring, coincidence and unplanned experiences in life and the workplace. Some if not most training is usually job specific, but on the contrary training may have positive long term implications. Another example would be training to be part of a particular group would result in management development programmed.
Therefore training and education maybe considered an integral part of the development process. Individuals tend to differ in their motivation levels to engage in any form of learning and development. Maurer had argued that the notion of ones self and possible self tend to be critical aspects of ones inclination towards development. Keeping in mind a very important growth theory, Alderfer’s theory of growth needs a focal starting point, Maurer on the other hand emphasized that active involvement in learning and development program will surely strengthen individuals inclination of the self might become. In this case a vicious cycle may be fueled where many development oriented people sustain and increase their inclination towards learning activities.[2] The construction of a learner’s self-efficacy may turnout to be a vital pre-requisite for many if not all individuals as they become effective learners. And since learning is always accompanied with positive rewards a circle of feedback maybe initiated. Another association to self-efficacy is the acquiring of the skill of successfully engaging in development of career planning activities. Learning maybe greatly affected in an organization by the learners preference of interest and style or process.
When managers in an organization take decisions to develop employees or teams face a lot of problems, for example when considering management of careers, the psychological contract we observe that tensions and issues pertaining the organization’s power and politics may be more interested in issues regarding learning and development practices. Another pressing issue is determining the boundaries of development; these tend to vary from different stake holder’s perception. With respect to the management of learning and development policy related tensions may occur, like whom to develop and for what purpose.[3] This concern is important from the point of view of the organization to develop development policies which are fair and equitable policies, but also if the true value of learning and development is understood and implemented efficiently in the organization. In context of learning and development ad the political role and its association with power enforced by a particular group. These concerns may have long term implications and bearing on other organizational issues such as employee relation, motivation and involvement and commitment. Learning is a complex process; it requires a systematic approach to be effective. There are two general perspectives for identifying learning needs that apply to the broader majority. Firstly the individuals who collect information like researchers should be acquainted with learner’s daily life experiences and secondly increased participation methods need to be used to encourage learners to express their view independently. To correctly asses learning needs he right questions need to be asked, the questions can either compel an individual to express openly of totally discourage. The following questions will encourage responses. Open-ended questions, allow learners to divulge not only their experiences but also their opinions about a particular situation. An example of this would be, if females in this society can change something, what changes would they make exactly? Secondly descriptive questions., these may encourage individuals to describe a certain aspect of their organizational life, personal life or general perceptions of a community, for example will you tell us the work you do usually do each day? Thirdly focused questions, these usually proceed a general question so that learner are provided with an opportunity to provide more specific details about a situation, example of this , who assists you with you daily tasks? And lastly contradictory questions, some people tend to get uncomfortable when someone asks them a question they regard to be controversial. What a contradictory question does is present a controversial situation and asks them to react. An example of his would be some people would say women should stick to being housewives? What would u say?
In the systematic approach a learning needs analysis forms the initial phase and stands to be the most important phase. To get the needs analysis wrong will invariable effect all the other phases including the solution itself[4]. The primary step is the mythological approach to assessment and evaluation. The purpose f the assessment and needs evaluation is to evaluate learning and development against convention criteria to understand to likely impact on training events so that provisions and changes can be made to complete the whole process and obtain continuous
us synergy. Initial evaluations models used were determining reaction learning behavior and results. Organizational specific learning were valued on 5 levels including setting an evaluation criteria, report the reactions, assessing that actual learning has taken place, condensing learning and applying to actual workplace situations, results an overall business performance and lastly to determine return on investments. Learning needs analysis takes place on various levels, like occupational, organizational and individual level. As we know, organizations, individuals and occupations vary in multiple aspects therefore the needs analysis has to be carefully administered to ensure the most accurate solution. This analysis will in a nutshell will assess current status, predict future status and attempt to bridge the gaps.[5]
Certain questions must be deemed in appropriate as they discourage learning as well do not provide accurate information about learning needs. These questions usually take individuals out of their comfort zone and embarrass them. The information obtained is biased and useless. Firstly questions that lead, they project the researcher’s wants and limit the answers, and for example do u think this community may benefit from an adult education? Secondly questions that seem ambiguous, provide a vague and confusion atmosphere like what do u think of politics? And lastly questions that are closed which only generate one word answers like yes or no, like do you want to learn how to play the guitar?
The second important stage in the systematic approach to learning is the design of learning activities[6]. These designs are especially aimed to ensure the designing of learning activities is based on a very substantial pedagogic principles, it revolves around the learner and provides ample evidence. It promotes the development and completion of standard of the learning process. The design should also encourage inflow and outflow of expertise like the sharing and recycling of efficient designs. And lastly to support the establishment of communities, services and generate resources to promote the practice of learning designs to effectively aid and address the needs of learning. The aim of most designs of learning programs are basically evaluation based and to provide a synthetic and summarized plans of lessons learned. To benefit organizations and the wider community in understanding existing and emerging lessons. After the initial needs analysis is carried out successfully the next obvious stage is to design the learning solution, most of the times if not all this is tougher job than it sounds, many factors need to be considered like the specification of the objectives of learning. Importantly the identification of the content that will be used that will be used in the solution to meet all objectives. The decision on which methods to use in the delivery of the solutions. The creation of activities, exercises and other role playing activities to be administered during the training and lastly the compilation if the material. Few problems that arise during the process are that the developer maybe projects their own styles and preferences in the methods to be used.[7] This is a problem because it means that majority of the learners may not be able to adopt that particular style, it is therefore imperative for the designer to be conscious of all these factors so hat the learning and development process is effective. People learn best when there is a rich blend of three dimensions the psychomotor form of learning by doing, affective learning by understanding and lastly cognitive form of learning by processing and organizing. Distinct individual learning styles include the reflectists, pragmatists and theorists forms. To get the learning needs analysis done and designing solutions the only determining
Factor of the effectiveness of the needs analysis as well the designs for effective learning is the guile and enthusiasm of the trainer. Consultants have to be highly trained professionals and facilitators with many years of learning and development experience. They should possess the ability to bring the material or activity to life, to make the whole learning process and experience real and substantial to being about a positive outcome. It is therefore imperative to take into account culture, learning styles and include creativity, variety and participation and an environment that includes motivation and challenges. When delivering program we adopt a flexible approach, taking into account your culture and appropriate learning styles. Key elements of our approach include variety, participation and the creation of an environment in which your people will feel motivated yet challenged.
The next step in the process is the assessment and evaluation to measure the viability of the learning and development process against maintained standards. To review progress. Details of which have been mentioned earlier. As mentioned earlier we divide evaluation into four groups. Reactionary, what feelings does the learner possess about he training, learning itself what has the learner acquired in terms of knowledge. Behavioral, what new skills have been developed during the learning process and the effectiveness of the new skills in an organizational context. The most important aspect of evaluation is validity, reliability and accurate findings. On the contrary these goals may require a lot of time, human resource than an organization might actually have. Evaluators are also trying to devise solutions that are practical and reliable. Evaluation of learning and development can take place in three phases. Firstly before the implementation of the design, this can monitor the methods of training and development, be able to monitor employees learning habits and check if other employees respond as well. This can also be implemented on highly skilled employees and their opinions can be recorded. and lastly do the procedures confer to preference and leadership styles. Evaluation can be carried out during the training, simply by asking employees how hey are doing, do they understand etc, short tests and viva. It is important to determine the attitudes of the employees in the scheme, its surprising that workers will leave considering it to be a waste of time. And the main evaluation comes after the completion of the training, a final test after the training and development, comprehensive interview, observes the employee for changes and lastly gathers the opinion of a professional evaluator. The systematic approach to training is beneficial as each phase results acts as an input to the next stage[8]. For example the needs analysis produces goals for learning that are used as inputs in the next phase of devising a learning design. training g or instructional design uses the goals to manufacture material and methods of training and development to achieve the objectives. As mentioned earlier each phase acts as an evaluator to improve the overall success of the approach.
Organizational learning is the acquisition of knowledge, distribution of information as well as interpretation of the same and the ability of the organization to retain adaptability to changing circumstances. In other words it is the organizations adjustment of actions based on past and current experiences. . the challenge is doing to learn and learning to do[9]. All firms have their own methods of acquisition of knowledge. The most important bit of information is acquired from outside the firm during conception. During the initial years managers resort to copy or mimic what they consider to be successful practices of others. Organizations on the whole use various other techniques. Firstly mimicry, when organization copy the successful practices of other organizations. Secondly vicarious learning, which involves in catching lessons from others experience, learning through less systematic ways like scaning and grafting. Scanning is when useful solutions and inducted in from outside and grafting is the employment of units or individuals from other firms that be of some assistance to our firm. It is also important to understand organizational learning cycles. All the nineties many corporations in America experienced downsizing, these companies included AT&T, General Motors and IBM. Although there were many factors affecting the downsizing, many firms found themselves unable to learn in a systematic way. Instead they indulge in massive attempts to when simply a change is due.
Certain studies show why organizations fail to learn while other improve quickly.[10] He two types of learning cycles are firstly the deficit cycle, where the patterns of deterioration in performance and is followed by continuous deterioration. Secondly the benefit cycle is the trend of successful adjustment followed by continuous improvements.
Organizational development is the application of organizational learning in a quest to improve the organizations ability to adapt with changing climates and problem solving ability. The organization development process begins with the diagnosis like any other systematic approach, and then comes the active intervention and finally the reinforcement. These steps are basically achieved by organizational development interventions, activities planned to support the developmental process. Interventions across organizations will include, survey feedbacks which starts of with the collection of data via questionnaires and samples, confrontational meetings help determine the factors that improve organizations. Structural redesigning involves tuning the structure of the organization or sub parts to improve performance. Interventions on group level include team building to gather information from a group to improve overall effectiveness; process consultation helps improve areas like decision making, norms, communication, and conflicts ad cohesiveness.
The main aspect of this paper was learning. The jargon that exists in the literature is diverse and it may be quite difficult to provide a definition that can be used in a broader context. For this paper focuses on a permanent change in knowledge skills and attitudes that will eventually guide, thought and action. From the point of view of performance improvement goal of learning and development the progress in skill, knowledge and attitude should result in employees individual or collectively to perform much better.[11] Within this parameter this improved performance should lead to productivity and thus the contribution is considered to be meaningful. One extreme challenge of the learning and development theory is that the amalgamation of some themes and issues in a workplace can definitely be managed in a better way in order for individuals to acquire skills easily and effectively which will lead to eventual development and growth and achieve personal and professional goals. Not all that people learn comes from a systematic process and the outcomes may be unexpected to the extent that we know more than me may proclaim. Also emphasis needs to be placed on individual learning to eventually achieve collective learning especially in those particular small industries where creative knowledge is a form of absolute advantage. learning and development is not a process that can be left to chance or luck. The corner stone of learning and development is assessing the needs. Owners and employees are biggest stakeholders and have dual roles as learners and teachers[12]
References:
Clifford, Jackie. Workplace Learning and Development: Delivering Competitive Advantage for Your Organization. 6th ed. Virginia: Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.
Harrison, Rosemary. Learning and Development. 4 ed. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Denmark: CIPD Publishing, 2005.
Marcus A.A 1993 Business and society: Ethics Government and the world Economy, Homewood Jelinoes, Richard Irwin
McNamara, Carter. “Systematic Approaches to training and development.” 2008. http://www.managementhelp.org/trng_dev/basics/isd.htm (accessed 1st August 2008).
Morgan, Gareth. Imaginization: The Art Of Creative Management. Sage Publications, 1993.
Osborn, Richard. Organizational Behavior. 6 ed. Tony VenGraitis. Canada: Von Hoffman Press, 1997
[1] Gareth Morgan, Imaginization, p. 17
[2] Morgan, Gareth. Imaginization: The Art Of Creative Management. Sage Publications, 1993.
[3] Harrison, Rosemary. Learning and Development. 4 ed. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Denmark: CIPD Publishing, 2005
[4] Clifford, Jackie. Workplace Learning and Development: Delivering Competitive Advantage for Your Organization. 6th ed. Virginia: Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.
[5] Clifford, Jackie. Workplace Learning and Development: Delivering Competitive Advantage for Your Organization. 6th ed. Virginia: Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.
[6] Harrison, Rosemary. Learning and Development. 4 ed. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Denmark: CIPD Publishing, 2005
[7] Osborn, Richard. Organizational Behavior. 6 ed. Tony VenGraitis. Canada: Von Hoffman Press, 1997
[8] Morgan, Gareth. Imaginization: The Art Of Creative Management. Sage Publications, 1993.
[9] Osborn, Richard. Organizational Behavior. 6 ed. Tony VenGraitis. Canada: Von Hoffman Press, 1997
[10] Marcus A.A 1993 Business and society: Ethics Government and the world Economy, Homewood Jelinoes, Richard Irwin.
[11] Osborn, Richard. Organizational Behavior. 6 ed. Tony VenGraitis. Canada: Von Hoffman Press, 1997
[12] Clifford, Jackie. Workplace Learning and Development: Delivering Competitive Advantage for Your Organization. 6th ed. Virginia: Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.
