ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING FOR SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES

An organisation is more successful if its employees learn quicker, implement and commercialise knowledge faster than the competition's workers. An organisation that is unable to continuously develop, share, mobilise, cultivate, put into practice, review, and spread knowledge will not be able to compete effectively. That is why the ability of an organisation to improve existing skills and acquire new ones forms its most tenable competitive advantage. This article introduces a knowledge management quick scan to

measure this ability.

KNOWLEDGE is a function of information, culture, and skills:

<Knowledge> = f (<Information>, <Culture>, <Skills>)

The function <f> specifies the relationship between knowledge on the one side and information, culture, and skills on the other. In this context information comprises the meaning given to data or information obtained according to certain conventions; this is also known as explicit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). On the one hand, culture is the total amount of standards, values, views, principles, and attitudes of people that underscore their behaviour and functioning. On the other hand, skills are related to the capability, ability, and personal experience of people; they relate to what people can do, know, and understand. The knowledge components culture and skills represent implicit knowledge, which depends on the individual and is stored in the minds of people. This concept is based on experience, is practical in nature, and finds its source, among other things, in associations, intuitions, and fantasies. Explicit knowledge, on the contrary, is not dependent on the individual, is theoretical in nature, and is specified as procedures, theories, equations, manuals, drawings, etc. This knowledge is mainly stored in management information and technical systems, and organisational routines. How can knowledge be transformed into new behaviour? Thus, how can people learn effectively so that they can function better? If knowledge is to lead to competent action, then learning should receive special attention, and the organizational culture and structure should stimulate and support this.

Knowledge ages rapidly and is liable to wear. Learning is a continuous personal transformation. It is a cumulative process of the continuous actualisation of your knowledge, in order to change your behaviour so you can function and act better. It is a permanent change in your knowledge and behaviour partly due to repeated experiences. The intention is improving the quality of your thinking and acting.

In view of the increasing shift from lifetime employment to lifetime employability, people must make sure that their knowledge is up-to-date. An organisation is more successful if its employees learn quicker, and implement and commercialise knowledge faster than the competition's workers. An organisation that does not learn continuously and is not able to continuously develop, share, mobilise, cultivate, put into practice, review, and spread knowledge will not be able to compete effectively. That is why the ability of an organisation to improve existing skills and acquire new ones forms its most tenable competitive advantage. It is, therefore, imperative to constantly know which knowledge is essential, where it is available in the organisation, which associate possesses this skill, how this knowledge can be adequately utilised, how it can be shared, how this provides added value, and how it can be maintained. The organisation's knowledge infrastructure must be organised so that effective team work, creativity, positive thinking, self confidence, and a good learning environment are stimulated by the use of computers, the Internet and intranet, design of a knowledge-bank, presence of a library, continuous training, organisation of brainstorm sessions, and review meetings.

The ability of an organisation to learn by experience depends on the employees' willingness to think about problems, about the opportunity presented to associates to identify and solve common problems together, the willingness to intervene preventively, and the existence of a working atmosphere where every employee feels responsible for the company's performance. In practice, organisations especially seem to learn if employees have a sense of direction through a collective ambition (mission and vision), and work with all their might to realise this ambition. Because of this, employees feel a strong common bond, which motivates them to learn together. Under these inspiring circumstances, they are also willing to share their knowledge with their colleagues and match their personal objectives with the ones of the organisation. Through this, learning organisations emerge in which learning is collective and based on a personal and collective ambition.

Learning organisations have the ability to learn and facilitate all facets of the learning process and thus continuously transform themselves. Such organisations consist of teams with balanced learning styles, and people whose personal ambition corresponds to that of the organisation. Because of this, they have a positive attitude towards improving, changing, and learning. Learning organisations also consist of people who constantly learn from their own mistakes, share knowledge and communicate openly with each other. These organisations have leaders who coach, help, inspire, motivate, stimulate, and intuitively make decisions, and have processes that are constantly reviewed based on performance measures and feedback.

The management of the knowledge stream within the organisation is essential for this, as well as changing the way we think and deal with each other. According to Peter Senge (1990), people must give up their traditional way of thinking, have to develop their own skills and be open to change, understand how the whole organisation functions, and formulate the shared vision of the organisation together to try to fulfill this ambitious dream as a team. These basic elements of learning organisations are also based on people's experiences. In practice it shows that the tempo with which the abilities of an organisation increase are to a greater degree determined by the efficiency with which one learns from experiences. In order to obtain an optimum learning effect, people should have a certain educational level and specifically get the chance to acquire experience; this is because people with experience learn faster. Therefore, it is important to accept that every employee is able to learn and is motivated to do so, that learning is not a passive but active and continuous process and that associates need guidance in this process.