BUS 510 Organisational Learning And Change Assessment 2 Answer

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Question :

Unit: 
Organisational Learning and Change
Unit Code: 
BUS 510
Type of Assessment: 
Assessment 2 – Individual essay 
Unit Learning Outcomes addressed:
Learning outcomes – (a), (c), (d), (e) and (f) 
a)    Critically analyse and critique the major theories of organisational learning.
c)    Critically review and evaluate the reasons for different approaches to change, and demonstrate an ability to apply this understanding to volatile or novel organisational contexts.
d)    Critically analyse and critique common perspectives on the role of, and relationship between, individuals, teams and leaders in the change processes.
e)    Integrate biblical frameworks into a contemporary understanding of organisational learning and change.
f)     Integrate the concepts of organisational learning, strategic andinnovative change management with leadership theory and practice
 
Criteria for Assessment:
·         Criterion 1 - Extent to which question is answered (5/30)
·         Criterion 2 - Understanding of the theoretical concepts (10/30)
·         Criterion 3 - Extent of critical analysis (10/30)
·         Criterion 4 - Structure and references (5/30) 
 
Assessment Task:
The purpose of this assessment is to improve the analysis of organisational learning concepts within the organisations and the ability to design of relevant solutions. 
 
Students will be expected to write an essay in response to the question below.
 
Question
Discuss any five (5) key barriers to organisational learning in organisations in your home country. Explain in detail, any four (4) strategies that that can be implemented to improve organisational learning. 
Support your discussion on the barriers with examples drawn from your home country.
Total Mark & Weighting:
30 marks (30%)

 General notes for assignment

Assignments should usually incorporate a formal introduction, main points and conclusion, and will be fully referenced including a reference list. 

 The word count for the assessment is 1500 words (+/- 10%)

 Marks will be deducted for failure to adhere to the word count

 General Notes for Referencing 

References are assessed for their quality. You should draw on quality academic sources, such as books, chapters from edited books, journals etc. Your textbook can be used as a reference, but not the lecturer notes. We want to see evidence that you can conduct your own research. Also, in order to help markers, determine students’ understanding of the work they cite, all in-text references (not just direct quotes) must include the specific page number/s if shown in the original. 

Work that includes sources that are not properly referenced according to the “Harvard Referencing Workbook” will be penalized.

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Answer :

Organisational Learning and Change

Assessment 2 – Individual essay

The organizational learning is a process of creating, retaining and transferring the knowledge between the employees of the organization. It also improves the gain experience. In this way, the organization can broadly develop knowledge. The organizational learning is essential for the employees of the organization. By adopting this knowledge, the employees can increase their understanding of the organization. It will give them the idea of the business of the organization. This also encourages the sharing of learning. The employees need to implement this idea on the organization. This will also enhance the profitability of the organization.

Managing resistance to change is a very crucial thing for many reasons. This resistance to change can be an act of opposing the modification or the transformation which alters the status quo.  When the employees of an organization believe the input is considered, they are not going to experience the resistance to change. In the worst case scenario employees of the organization may feel uncomfortable with the transformation, but they resist. Sometimes it happens by doing something they share this in the workplace. There are two types of resistance covert resistance and overt resistance. The covert resistance is not helpful for the employees of the organization. This can damage the progress of the changes. This is very difficult to deal with the invisible resistance (Dixon, 2017). As an example, the employees of the Woolworths Companies has also faced the problem. There are many ways the company has wanted to reduce the resistance to change. The employees of this company have changed the business plan and expectation about the business. These two things also cause resistance to change in the organization. The anxiety also causes resistance to change. In this way, the company has applied these two theories to overcome resistance to change. 

For an organization to continue to adopt new technology, it must have direct leadership. Direct leadership also helps the process of learning and the improvement of performance. The lack of leadership also hampers individual and team learning. This lack of leadership also brings down the confidence of the employees. To be an influential organization the managers and the leaders of this company should deny the idea of lack of leadership. For denying the idea of lack of leadership, the leaders do not need to passive. The lack of direct leadership also hampers the productivity and profitability of the organization. The lack of leadership does not motivate people to work in an organization (Namada, 2018). This lack of leadership also hampers the performance appraisal. To implement a plan to eradicate the lack of leadership from the organization the managers need to adopt and implement the new ideas. As an example In the Woolworths company, the employees have also faced a lack of leadership. This has also decreased the efficiency of the people of working. In this way, they have lost confidence. To overcome this lack of leadership the company has implemented new rules. Every team involved in an organization must be attentive in their responsibilities and perform their duties with conviction. The teams who lose focus on their success often do not know their mistakes or their success. The team members should hold each other accountable for the results and take it upon themselves the responsibility for the outcome. This criticality is essential in overcoming the obstacles of the team and the organization. The team must track the progress to gauge the metric of success and failures alike to learn from the mistakes or improve on the success. (Wood et al. 2016) The team members must keep in vision the immediate as well as the long term goals for the company and must act accordingly. It is also essential to build trust among the employees. If it is visible, the extent of functioning must be assessed for team success. The team must always keep improving and inventing and reinventing focus on completing a task in time. For example, The AFL club Hawthorn has lost 2012 final to Sydney. Upon inspection, it was evident that the focus must be shifted to the team even when they have reached the finals. The focus of the team was lost in the final moments of the game. It was also evident that the focus of the management has also shifted which required mending. Although, the team could be regarded as reasonably successful the need to change tactics was evident. The Australian cricket team could also be taken as an example in spite of their repeated World Cup glories, they never lost focus of the team success and strived again with equal conviction (Dixon, 2017). 

The team must always be keen to learn new things and develop their skills and abilities. The value of learning must also be emphasized to adapt to the changes in the environment and technological advancements. When a team loses its interest in learning, it loses the cutting edge to stay at the tip of the industry trend. The tasks also become of inferior quality due to non-integration of recent techniques. This impacts the business and profitability of the company. Each of the team members must always improve themselves to contribute to the tasks and stay relevant to the company (Namada2018). Thus, value for learning is also required to grow as a professional. For example, the Australian Women's Cricket Team has learned the importance of team success from the men's team and emulated them for their success. The value for learning is also required to develop a culture of upgradation and respect within the team for talents and innovation alike.

The responsibility of the team leader and management is to control the working environment for the employees to operate and function in a particular and acceptable way. This can be effectively done by laying down rules and regulation for the employees and educating them about the aims and objectives of the company. The organizational environment should also be controlled to reap out the desired results in the framework of the company and to increase the profitability of the business (Ocasio, Rhee & Milner, 2017). The focus of the team is determined by the organizational environment as to how the employees operate in a circumstance determines the outcome of the tasks. The desires result requires careful inculcation of infrastructure to achieve the results which will increase the short term focus of the team. It is also vital to concentrate on the short term focus to arrive at a higher goal. This responsibility of taking the team through short term focus towards the aims and objectives of the company is if the management who can do this by controlling the working environment.

The four strategies for improving organizational learning are:

The leaders, managers and the employees together should engage in organizational learning to increase the acceptability of the procedure. The employees often emulate their leaders, and thus it is essential for the business to cultivate learning at the leadership level for emulating. The managers could also encourage the employees to learn and improve, but it will be more productive and dependable when they do the same. In such condition, proper implementation of the leadership approach and theories are needed. Transformation approach could be beneficial to create an appropriate teamwork and effective communication. Also, the leader must need to consider the contingency theory to handle various situations (Fiedler, 2015). It is essential for the employees to complement their learning with their performance and not just for the sake of learning. The employees must be taught the relationship between their performance and learning as learning gradually changes their skills and abilities. They must be shown the impacts of assimilating learning in their professional tasks to envisage proper reasoning to them. This would further the cause of learning, i.e. improvement. 

The organizational learning can also be sped up by incentivising successful employees. It is often seen that when there is a reward involved, the tendencies of the employees to win accolades increases manifold. This could be taken advantage of an introduction of sufficient reward system could catalyse the organizational learning for the benefit of the employees and the business as well (Hahn e al, 2015). The reflective culture is another instrument which can expedite organizational learning. It is always crucial to reflect, reconstruct and analyse what has been learned to get the essence of the education rather than just the information gathering. The company could also provide an easily accessible form of education for the use by the employees like e-libraries, e-books etc. from the comfort of their homes or at their leisure.

This project has taught me the value of learning and continually upgrading self to become a better version. This is essential for the growth and development of the business as well as the professional because after all the company grows only when the employees grow. So, to stay relevant organizational learning is essential. The analysis of organizational learning has enabled me to form effective strategies to expedite learning in the organizational framework. The possible impacts of the lack of learning thereof have also been discussed in details.