Organizational Change and Learning

As the business environment has seen rapid changes and increased competitiveness over the years, organizational learning is a must. It is observed that companies that initiate a change and learn from their mistakes, will have an edge over their competitors and can take the first-mover advantage.

To keep up with the changing trends and organizational environment, every organization must undergo a transition or a change. Examples- hiring new employees, mergers, and acquisitions, or adding another department. However, it isn’t easy to adapt to changes. A manager has to oversee the change and serve as a guide to the employees.

Organizational change occurs when a company alters its culture, technology, infrastructure, or internal process due to new leadership, shifts in teams, new technology, and new business model. Organizational change management refers to benefit from the change and it involves three phases- preparation, implementation, and follow-through.

Change even though a challenge but also serves as an opportunity for growth and development.

There are two types of changes- adaptive and transformational. Adaptive changes are small and incremental alterations adopted over time which led to minor improvements and adjustments. For example, shifting from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Whereas transformational changes have a larger scope and take a lot of time and resources. For example, adoption of covid protocols across all departments.

Organizational change is important for a company to grow and succeed while change management is important to make the transition smooth and save time and resources. Effective change management helps to develop new skills and higher morale among employees.

Managers who possess communication, decision-making, delegating, and organizational skills can adapt to change easily. They can gather support from their associates and employees.

Change management is not just focused on effective transition but is also important during implementation as employees need to be trained continuously and need to be made aware of the new business methodologies and technology.

Organization learning is a continuous process that refers to the process of improvement over the years by gaining experience and knowledge. Organizational learning plays a significant role in a company as the development and transfer of knowledge would lead to skilled employees and strengthen organizational capabilities.

Whenever an idea is developed, it undergoes three stages namely conceive, act and reflect. The reflection of the actions taken leads to learning. The knowledge gained through this exercise should also be able to be transferred to others.

The importance of organizational learning can be observed in better skills, higher job satisfaction, higher morale among employees, lower turnover rates, and easy adaptability.

Teamwork plays an important role in learning as by sharing new ideas, experiences, and solutions, the knowledge can be transferred among the employees referring to the continuous nature of learning. Contingency planning also leads to organizational learning as managers as forced to review alternative solutions and be prepared for any changes.

Learning through the failures and closely reflecting on the processes can lead to higher knowledge creation. When there is equal sharing of this knowledge, it leads each individual to contribute substantially to the growth and success of the company and also easily adaptability in this fast-changing world of business. Flexible organizations that are willing to take risks and experiment with new methodologies, achieve an edge in the competitive race and are profitable. When experimenting employees are forced to use their problem-solving skills and also apply their creativeness which leads to higher learning. Thus, organizational learning and organizational change go hand in hand.