Study On Organizational Learning Based On Organizational Characteristics

There are few systematic approaches for building the learning organization and measuring the organizational learning capability, so implementing organizational learning is not an easy task. The objective of the paper is to develop an operable approach assessing the state of learning organization and measuring the learning capability of organization.On a literature basis, this paper summarized the theoretical framework of organizational learning, which includes learning types, learning levels, social processes and technology processes, and we made some modifications to some of these theories. After analyzing the theory of organizational learning, this paper induced and generalized the five dimensions of implementing the theory of organizational learning into building learning organization, including learning power, organization transformation, leader empowerment, knowledge management, information technology, then analyzed these organizational characteristics and management practices which could lead to learning in this five dimensions. According to the above analysis, we developed a 25-item questionnaire that captured the major organization characteristics and management practices which promoted learning to take place in an organization, and surveyed and described the state of a learning organization using the questionnaire.Learning efficiency and effectiveness is of great significance to a learning organization, and the organizational learning capability is the key indices of learning efficiency and effectiveness. In this paper we provided an approach to measure the learning capability of an organization based on the organization characteristics. The rationale of this approach is that certain organization characteristics and management practices can either help or hinder learning. If we can identify and assess the impact of a set of organization characteristics and management practices that lead to learning, we could assess learning capability of an organization. We developed a new method to measure the learning capacity of an organization, which was consisted of five dimensions (mission and objective, commitment and empowerment, experimentation, transfer of knowledge, team and workgroup), and designed another questionnaire that includes the 25-item organizational characteristics and management practices measuring the learning capability of an organization.Based on the analysis of the theory and the experiment results, we provided some specific suggestions for developing learning organizations.This paper consists of about forty thousand words, 17 pictures and 9 tables.