Part - I

With businesses facing intense competition, only organizations that continuously strive to learn will survive. The pressure for better level of performances and improvements needed today requires the will to learn. In the new learning organization people will aim high, learn to create the results they desire, and reap the bottom-line benefits necessary to sustain success in the global marketplace. Says Aries De Geus, head of planning for Royal Dutch/Shell, "The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage." The learning organization is what a corporation can and should be.

Definitions by Key Writers

"The essence of organizational learning is the organization's ability to use the amazing mental capacity of all its members to create the kind of processes that will improve its own."

- Nancy Dixon

"A Learning Company is an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members and continually transforms itself."

- M. Pedler, J. Burgoyne and Tom Boydell

"Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together."

- Peter Senge

Why Do We Need a Learning Organization

Six Learning Disabilities

Though we may see and think in straight lines, reality is made up of circles. Linear thinkers are always looking for a thing or person who is responsible. Systems thinkers take on greater responsibility for events, because their perspective suggests that everyone shares responsibility for problems generated by a system. The following corporate learning disabilities arise when we view the world in linear, and not systematic, ways: -

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* Contributed by -
S. Parthasarathy,
Management Student,
BIM Trichy.