Six Interactional Elements

Discuss the various aspects of the speech delivered by Luke Terry.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the various aspects of the speech delivered by Luke Terry who was the former CEO of Toowoomba Clubhouse and contextualize it within the theoretical framework of learning organization and knowledge management systems.

‘Organisations today are often flooded with information’. If you recall your experience in the Prison Escape team activity in Assignment 1, you possibly agree with the above statement. In a learning organisation, employees are often able to understand the whole organisation as well as their part in it in order to identify needs and solve problem seven when they are flooded with information. Based on Samson &Daft’s (2009) six interacting elements in the learning organisation, do you agree that Toowoomba Clubhouse is a learning organisation and why?

Ans. According to Samson & Daft, learning organization can be defined as one where everyone is involved in the identification of the problems and solving of the problems, enabling the organization to continuously work for the experimentation and learning what they feel best would work for the company. There are six interactional elements in a learning organization. These six interactional elements are leadership, team-based structure, employee empowerment, open information, participative strategy and strong & adaptive culture. The term leadership refers goals, objectives and the decisions that are to be made by the leaders in direction the troops that would reflect the individual view of the leader. Leadership indicates transforming the organization into a learning organization. The role of a leader in a learning organization is to think about the work rather than seeking control of the employees. The feature of the leader is to build on a relationship that is premised on the shared vision with the objective of shaping the organization. The term team-based structure indicate that the learning organization tend to operate through the incorporation of team-based structure. It has been found that self-directed teams are rudimentary for a learning organization and the teams are composed of employees possessing different skills for the rotation of jobs and the production of the entire service or the product.

The team members possess the requisite authority for making the decisions and for making new ways of learning for doing the things. Team members take the responsibility in an organization for the operations of the organization. The third element of the learning organization is rendering empowerment to the employees. This feature indicates that the employees would have the freedom and the power to make decisions and motivating them to perform effectively. In case of traditional leadership, the leaders are found to be instructions and in a way ordering the employees top deliver their best performance. On the other hand, the feature of transformational leadership would be to make the employees feel valued, empowered and motivated that would be manifested in their behavior and performance. The employees need to acquire knowledge and engage in self-directed work teams for the quality circles, enrichment of the job and the satisfaction of the employees in participating in the everyday activities of the company. The employees need to acquire skills and knowledge with the aim of becoming empowered. The fourth element of the open information in the organization can be witnessed in the form of growing information available for the interested parties and the various stakeholders of the organization. The task to is to identify the requirements, the gaps and thereby solving the problems. The employees need to understand the organization in totality. In addition, the employees need to identify their roles within the company (Reagans, Argote & Brooks 2005). A learning organization works with information and ideas rather than service, commodities and products. In this case, the role of the manager would be to furnish the pertinent information and at the same time provide them the authorities to work upon it. The fifth element of the organization is participative strategy that underscore on the responsibility of the top managers to create opportunities for the participation of the employees.. Strategy can be termed as something and imposed on the organization. The concern of the top managers is to understand in what ways their companies the company can deal with the challenges emerging from the environmental changes and in turn effectively make use of the resources. The highlight of the participative strategy is that it emerges from the top down as well as the bottom up. The sixth element envisaged by Samson & Daft is strong and adaptive culture. An organization should be reflective of the values of equality, team coordination, belongingness and community building and open information. The core value of the organization would be to treat everyone with respect, care and empathy. The organizational culture of a learning organization should epitomize the culture of questioning as it would challenge the established order and pave the path for improvement and creativity. There should be reward for motivating the employees about their new ideas. There can be the implementation of rewards for failures too for signifying that the organization is appreciative of people who can take risks.

Four Units of Learning

From these above characteristics of leadership it can be stated that Toomba Clubhouse is a learning organization because the leader of the organization engages in transformational leadership that would benefit the entire organization. Luke Terry have devised series of plans that include training restaurants, training cafes, men’s shed, eco-therapy gardens along with other facilities with the objective of making the employees confident and committed towards the shared vision of the organization. The knowledge in the company is being used as a team where the workforce would have a more participatory approach

Organisations gain knowledge in four units of learning.Based on the four organisational units of learning, discuss how Toowoomba Clubhousemay gain knowledge through learning?

Ans.) The four units of learning in the organization is the sharing of knowledge, capturing of knowledge, discovery of knowledge and application of knowledge. Knowledge sharing refers to the process through which the tacit or explicit knowledge that occurs from the microcosm to the macrocosm, from the individual to the group to the organizational levels. The importance of knowledge lies in enhancing the innovativeness of the organization and the performance. Socialization enables in the facilitation of this tacit knowledge (Evangelous, p. 97-98). Knowledge capture can be understood as the process for obtaining the knowledge from the mind of the individual as well as the explicit knowledge that may include policies and the manuals. Knowledge can inhabit in the individuals as well as the process, the culture and the organizational units and the inter-organizational networks (relational capital). This is the process of retrieving explicit and tacit knowledge that is present in the systems, networks and the organizational members.

The third aspect of learning is knowledge discovery that can be defined through the development of the new and the tacit knowledge in which the tacit relies on socialization and new knowledge is discovered through synthesis of socialization and through combination. It has been found that in this case, highly sophisticated systems are used for gathering the data for analysis on the common days (Samson & Daft 2009). This is known as the Big Data as it would help in generating more knowledge for making the decisions. The fourth element is knowledge application that is concerned with the process of the utilization of tacit and explicit knowledge within an organization  and contributes to the overall performance of the organization.

Toowoomba Clubhouse have sets its goals for knowledge sharing at specific points throughout the day. Luke Terry have devised a timetable that comprise of morning meetings that is followed by unit meetings and finally in the afternoon there are knowledge sharing meetings and is focused on the knowledge sharing for the entire group. Knowledge can be gained through learning through discussion and the notion of the social procurement. It has been found that the rate of unemployment in case of mental health illness is 28 per cent. Toowoomba is aware that kit is the largest disability group in Australia that aims to provide employment. From the studies conducted by the government and scholars, it has been found that the success of the federal government in getting people to work is 15 per cent and this knowledge is helpful for the organization to situate itself and assess the steps taken by the organization. The incident of funding from the European Union enable Luke Terry to understand the importance of social procurement for the survival of a learning organization. Therefore, he emphasized on development of knowledge through social procurement

How can Toowoomba Clubhouse strategically utilise the potential of knowledge management systems and what benefits/risks may the organisation gain from using technologies for capturing, organising, storing and sharing knowledge?

Ans.) The incorporation of knowledge management for the acceleration of extracting, collecting, dissemination, processing, structuring and the maintenance of knowledge asset for the different organizational  activities. Knowledge management system renders competitive advantage to the organizations in staying ahead of the other organizations. These systems enable the individuals to make use of the knowledge without acquisition and or learning that knowledge (Dalkir 2011). Knowledge management systems provide a variety of issues for the acquisition and creation of knowledge in the organizations, storage and the availability of that knowledge. This is implemented in the knowledge management systems  and the knowledge is available to the individuals for interpretation and reasoning about the collective knowledge. In this context, knowledge sharing refers to the exchange of the sequence of the interpretation, priorities, objectives, constraints and accommodation of the conflicting views (Evangelou &Karacapilidi  2005). The focus of Toowoomba Clubhouse has not solely been to make money with the aim of setting up the business but or to make money in an ethical money or in other words “good money”. On the contrary the thrust has been to incorporate use knowledge for reaping the good social outcome. It is important to focus on partnerships with the different companies utilize the knowledge that have been developed for years to make that a success

Some of the technologies for the application of knowledge are ICT (Information Communication Technology) that has played an instrumental role in the management of the knowledge process and research. However, the role of ICTs would vary significantly according to the specific approach of adopted knowledge management by the organization. Codification of knowledge a feature of ICTs would enable in the visibilization of ICT-supported knowledge management endeavors in which the codification are quite important. Another technology that would enable knowledge sharing is artificial intelligence that have the potential to imitate the problem-solving capabilities (Hendricks 2001). One visible disadvantage is that the verbal encouragement of the workers to engage in a computer based knowledge sharing system although necessary  however is inadequate in motivating the employees.

What recommendations would you provide to Toowoomba Clubhouse in order to develop a knowledge-sharing culture for implementing knowledge management and organizational learning?

Ans.) The suggestion for Toowoomba Clubhouse would be to implement knowledge leadership to develop knowledge sharing culture for the implementation of knowledge management and the organizational learning. The core value of the new generation of business would be to incorporate the unique capabilities that would make the extraordinary and the hard to copy. Extraordinary and hard to copy have been identified as unique capabilities that are in consonance with the resource-based theoretical framework of the firm (Argote 2013). The new generation of the management competencies are considered to be inappropriate for successfully conducting the international business  that have stemmed in the twentieth century and have stretched till the twenty-first century. International operations are contingent on the successful management of all the strategic alliances. Therefore, it is important for Toowoomba Clubhouse to adopt the style of leadership that is concerned with making appropriate plans through the utilization of the knowledge systems. The characteristic of effective knowledge lies in planning, determining the structure and the implementation of the stimulus for the interest of the operations of the company. It is important to develop appropriate knowledge culture that would reflect in the culture of the organization . This can be done through clearly sending out the messages both within the organization as well as outside the organization (Gray & Meister 2003). It is important to be committed, clear in one’s objectives and premise leadership on integrity, transparency and honesty.

Conclusion

From the above discussion it can be stated that an organization in order to become a learning organization need to focus on knowledge leadership, remain aware of the knowledge management systems  and incorporate the four units of learning in sharing of knowledge.

References

Argote, L 2013, ‘Group and organisational learning curves: Individual, system and environmental components’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 31-51

Dalkir, K 2011, Knowledge management in theory and practice, 2^ndedn. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Evangelou, C &Karacapilidis, N 2005, ‘On the interaction between humans and knowledge management systems: a framework of knowledge sharing catalysts’, Knowledge Management Research and Practice, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 253–61.

Gray, P & Meister, D 2003, ‘Introduction: fragmentation and integration in knowledge management research’, Information Technology and People, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 259–65.

Hendriks, PHJ 2001,‘Many rivers to cross: From ICT to knowledge management systems’, Journal of Information Technology, vol. 16, no. 2, pp.57-72.

Reagans, R, Argote, L & Brooks, D 2005, ‘Individual Experience and Experience Working Together: Predicting Learning Rates from Knowing Who Knows What and Knowing How to Work Together’, Management Science, vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 869-881.

Samson, D & Daft, RL 2009, Management, 3rd edn, Cengage Learning Australia, South Melbourne