ANNEXURE D - Learnership Agreement ANNEXURE E - Learnership Project Plan
3.5 LEARNING ORGANISATION
In Figure 3.3, Buckley and Caple propose that a learning cycle that incorporates experience is more valid, as highlighted. This cycle reflects more accurately how scientific knowledge is actually acquired and contends that learning from experience is ‘theory’ dependant, while refuting the notion that learners could enter the cycle at any point.
Figure 3.3: Buckley & Caple's Learning cycle incorporating experience (1995:
180)
The concept of a learning organisation has significant relevance for the discussion of learnerships in the public sector, and is becoming a popular concept in this domain. A discussion of the significance of locating learnerships within a learning organisation is reflected in the subsequent section.
Senge (1990: 4-14) describes a learning organisation as ”an organisation that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future” He also asserts that
”organisations that will truly excel in the future will be the organisations that discover how to tap peoples commitment and capacity to learn at all levels of the organisation”. They also work towards maintaining a fit within their environment, both internal and external (Raelin, 2008: 32). The Public Service, as a learning organisation, is high on government’s agenda as a way of promoting skills development, and ultimately effectiveness and efficiency.
Establishing a learning organisation depends on creating a learning culture.
This entails aligning the organisation’s objectives with the individuals development needs and creating the necessary support structure that promote a culture of lifelong or continuous learning (Van Dyk, 2003: 339-341).
According to Zuboff (1988: 395), the informated organisation is a learning organisation. One of its principal purposes is the expansion of knowledge; not knowledge for one’s own sake as in academic pursuit, but knowledge that comes to reside at the core of what it means to be productive. Learning is no longer a separate activity that occurs either before one enters the workplace or in a classroom activity, nor an activity preserved for a managerial group.
The behaviours that define learning and the behaviours that define being productive are one and the same. Learning is not something that requires time-out from being engaged in productive activity: learning is the heart of productive activity. To put it simply, learning is the “new form” of labour because of its renewed focus.
Central to this is the organisation’s commitment to individual employee learning. According to Senge (1990: 140), a manager’s fundamental task no longer lies in planning, organising and controlling but in providing the enabling environment for an employee to lead the most enriching life he or she can.
Senge proposes five disciplines that underwrite the building blocks for a learning organisation. They are personal mastery, mental modes, shared vision, team learning and systems thinking (1990: 6-11).
Personal mastery centres on the individual’s discipline for personal development and knowledge acquisition. An employee with high levels of personal mastery seeks to continuously expand his or her ability to create the results that are satisfying. His pursuit for continuous learning forms ‘the spiritual foundation’ of the learning organisation (Senge, 1990: 7).
Mental modes are the deep-seated assumptions and generalisations that influence employees negatively. It leads to the prevention of new practices from being implemented. The mental modes focus on turning the attention inward, “learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, and hold them rigorously to scrutiny” so that the individual is open to influence from others and in the process experiences self-development, without making assumptions on who these people are (Senge, 1990: 8-9).
A shared vision builds a sense of cohesion that permeates the whole organisation and results in employees that “excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to”. When this happens, they develop a common goal and aspire to achieve it (Senge, 1990: 9). The shared vision is crucial to organisation learning because it provides focus and energy for learning (Thornhill & Van Dijk, 2003: 339-341).
Team learning is a fundamental concept in learnerships as it engenders a culture of sharing and support, and Senge (1990: 233-236) concurs that team learning is the process of aligning and developing the capacity of the team in order to ensure organisational effectiveness and efficiency. Team learning invests in the potential wisdom of teams. An unaligned team is wasted energy and even though individual employees may work very hard, their collective effort does not translate into an efficient and effective group effort. Teams build on the shared vision principle.
The notion of systems thinking is a ‘discipline for seeing wholes’. This is a key aspect of the focus of public administration and service delivery (which was emphasised in the previous chapter). The growth of an organisation depends on the ability to consider all components and all the actions of an organisation
simultaneously. “Systems thinking contribute to the cornerstone of how learning organisations think about their world” (Senge, 1990: 69). In this regard, public sector managers have a responsibility to clearly determine the requirements of and processes to build a learning organisation. Paramount to the determinant of this process is to inculcate a perpetual learning culture.
This concept offers a management tool for developing the organisation by developing the competencies of the employees and the learning systems of the organisation.