Description

The learning organization is affected by both the individual and the organizational climate. In a two- to three-page paper (excluding the title and reference pages), describe Senge’s five disciplines and the characteristics of an organizational climate that promotes organizational learning. Include the following in your paper:

  1. Describe Senge’s five disciplines.
  2. Discuss characteristics of an organizational climate that supports organizational learning.
  3. Analyze how organizational climate and Senge’s disciplines are related to organizational learning.
  4. Your paper must include in-text citations and references from at least two scholarly sources, excluding the textbook. You may use this week’s lecture as an additional resource. Your paper must be formatted according to APA Guidelines as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.

    Five disciplines as described by Senge:

    • Personal mastery involves an individual’s ability to know what he or she wants and the desire to work toward that goal. A learning organization creates an environment in which members can develop themselves toward goals and purposes; transfer of training encourages expertise seeking of KSAs (Ackerman, Vokmar, & Volker, 2002).
    • Mental models are the employee’s internal worldview or paradigm. Learning organizations are based on holistic paradigms; that is, the organization is thought to be a living, breathing organism because it is filled with living, breathing organisms (Boje, 1991; Hassard, 1995). Therefore, in a holistic paradigm, the focus is on the process of transfer, not just the transfer itself.
    • Shared vision is building a sense of commitment in an organization by developing shared images of the future. This process includes developing the principles and guiding practices used to reach the goal. With respect to training transfer, organizations create shared vision by involving trainees in setting goals and training outcomes (Carter, Ulrich, & Goldsmith, 2012; Smith-Jentsch, Salas, & Brannick, 2001).
    • Team learning is geared toward developing collective thinking skills. These skills enable members of a group to reliably develop intelligence and abilities greater than the sum of the individual members’ talents. Transfer should be framed in the context of individual performance, team performance, and ultimately, organizational performance (Lee, Bond, Scarbrough, Gillan, & Cooke, 2007).
    • Systems thinking is a way of thinking about and understanding the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. This mode of thinking helps organizations see how to change the systems more effectively by error detecting and correcting (Argyris, 1999). If we look at transfer as part of the ADDIE system of training, we can assist transfer by better understanding the ADDIE subsystem, with its interrelationships and linkages.