Innovation: Why Organizational Learning is Necessary for Businesses?

Learning Organizations
Name:
Institutional
Learning Organizations
Recent studies have shown that organizational learning is necessary for businesses (Garcia-Morales et al., 2007) where if applied well, it solves many problems encountered by businesses. Innovation is crucial for the survival of organizations in the modern world. Innovation is becoming an important factor that allows organizations react to competition and the fast changing business environment by providing the ways to constant improvement. The development, distribution, and application of new ideas in organizational learning have something to do with innovation. Workers in the recent past, have had a change in attitude; being more participatory and having control over what they learn and information, which in turn have led to faster learning and pioneering ways of cooperation among people, teams, establishments, and networks. Within this framework, this essay seeks to examine learning organizations with the context of innovation.
Contrary to the past, learning is now more social, informal, and collaborative as is been noted by organizations (Petiz et al., 2015). This is greatly supported by information and communication technologies (ICT). As industries, in particular, seek to improve and create products and services, organizations should understand how to encourage informal learning and non-formal learning as well as management practices for knowledge, and how this is possible through ICT enabling organizations to be more capable. Organizational learning addresses innovation in an organization as part of the change.
The features of a learning organization are its processes, structures, and cultures that enable it to institutionalize individual learning and knowledge management (Tidd & Bessant, 2013). A learning organization is, therefore, a business term for an organization that enables its members to learn and transform continuously. Learning in organizations happens in three levels where each influences the others. First, it occurs as at an individual level where a person acquires the skills and abilities needed to execute tasks necessary to perform particular functions. The second is the group level concerns social and collaborative processes associated with learning, conflict resolution, collective decision-making, ongoing feedback, and much more. The organizational level is the other; it is a combination of the other two that copy on the organization through structures, rules, processes, and routines. Organizations must consider how important these three levels are connected in organizational learning since the real benefit is not provided to the organization unless the knowledge is shared and institutionalized.
Organizational learning results from formal, informal, and non-formal learning experiences. Formal learning takes place in an organized and structured environment that is always intentional. Informal learning is derived from activities such as daily work, family, or leisure. It is not organized or structured and it lacks defined objectives in terms of results. Informal learning is not something a learner could do intentionally and almost always never ending in certification. Finally, non-formal learning is learnt through an interm...