Assignment

Concepts you should know:

a. Knowledge economy
b. Learning organisations
c. Explicit and tacit knowledge
d. Single-loop versus double-loop learning
e. Pragmatism

Discussion Questions:

a. "Organization charts are tools for mapping the structure of roles and responsibilities distributed throughout an organization and can be useful for redesigning an organization structure as well. They provide a fairly clear representation of an organization's hierarchy of authority and a general idea of its division of labor, but, organisation charts do not offer much information about coordination mechanisms, informal relationships (although some can be represented with dotted lines), or the distribution of power that flows outside the formal hierarchy" (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2013: 272). Discuss with reference to different organisational designs and formal and informal organisational arrangements.

b. How is organisational learning different in learning organisations from other organisations?

c. "....fully developed learning organisations are rare in the West. In contrast, Chinese organisations seem naturally to be learning organisations" (Elkin and Cone, 2009: 69). How might we account for this situation?

d. Which measures of organisational effectiveness are most appropriate for learning organisations? Why?

e. Organisations tend to be measured by process maturity, e.g. ISO9000, Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR), Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). It may be argued that at the highest level of process maturity, organisations are merely fulfilling Single Loop Learning. Are single and double loop levels of learning desirable? Discuss.