Organizational Learning
...mployee fits into a group. Usually they start at the bottom and work their way up. Fortress Culture is where employees do not know whether they will have a job one minute to the next. Those type of organizations usually undergo massive reorganization. Diversity is normally defined in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, age, national origin, religion and disability. Human beings cannot change the primary dimensions. They shape our basic self-image and have a great deal of influence on how we see the world. Hundred of definitions have been published in communication literature trying to describe, predict and understand the communication phenomena. I believe there is not a true definition or measurement of organizational effectiveness; people make effective judgments regularly when they buy stock, take their car for repairs or choosing a college. We use speed of service, friendliness of employees, value, quality, performance and other measures to determine effectiveness. Organizational effectiveness is about doing everything you know to do and doing it well. The universals of management – planning, organizing, leading, direction and controlling – have not changed. They are still important and executing them well remains challenging. The answer here is similar to the finding in the famous meeting between American and Japanese managers. When asked by American guests now the Japanese were making such quality cars, on Japanese manager smiled and said we are following the book. He then presented the “textbook” of assembly line production written by Henry Ford in the early 1920’s. Ironically, one of the leaders of the industrial revolution, Henry Ford, Sr., developed many of the fundamentals of what we now call “total quality practices” in the early 1900s. This approach was only discovered when Ford executives visited Japan in 1982 to study Japanese management practices. As the story goes, one Japanese executive referred repeatedly to “the book”, which the Ford people learned was a Japanese translation of My Life and Work, written by Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther in 1926 (New York: Garden City Publishing Co.) “The book” had become Japan’s standard while Ford Motor Company had strayed from its principles over the years. The Ford Executives could only find a copy at a used bookstore when they returned to the United States. Organizational Learning is acquiring, application and mastering new tools and methods that will allow more rapid improvement of processes whose improvement is critical to the success of the organization, states Arthur M. Schneiderman. Organizations are not using their full potential; there are many gaps, even those core processes that can affect competitive position. Organizations are constantly moving between periods where they are learning and periods where they are applying thei...