Understanding Learning Organization in Malaysian Organizational Context

Abstract

The purpose of a learning organization supposes to gain a competitive advantage by changing, reshaping and modifying the existing situation of an organization through collective learning. There have been some assertions that without appropriate understanding of the concepts of learning organization, an organization might not be able to act as a learning organization. The objective of this paper was to gain insight and indicates how the Malaysian organizations understand the concepts of learning organization. Three organizations were selected for this study. The nature of the organizations varies based on their own functions. Organization A was a service oriented organization B was an economic development and organization C was a research and development organization. The study was qualitative in nature. This means that the focus was to understand an event and its interactions within the natural context in order to indicate on how the Malaysian organizations understand the concept of learning organization. The study found that although the understanding of the concepts of learning organization was still at early stage but the study indicated some evolving ideas in all three organizations. It was also observed that the understanding of learning organization was interpreted based on the organization’s own identity. The study provides some guidelines to enable the organizations concerned to develop their organization into a learning organization. It also suggested that the understanding of the learning organization can enable the organizations concerned to develop into full-pledge learning organization.