Campus Monterrey
 
Or-95-073. The Learning Organization as a Strategy for Global Competitiveness
 
GENERAL OBJECTIVES OF THE MATERIAL
 
The Learning Organization is the development of systematic acquisition, maintainence, and transference of knowledge for the organization as a whole. The learning organization requires profound changes in the corporate culture to assure a supporative learning environment, enhanced learning speed, openness to change, and creative use of knowledge.
 
GENERAL OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE
 
This course will identify key aspects of developing and implementing the changes required for the learning organization. It will focus on corporate culture, leadership, mental models, learning communities, and shared values. It will show how the learning organization is the only type of work environment that can remain competitive in the knowledge-value era that defines most of the international markets. It will show why even smart, successful organizations can fail to learn and suddenly find themselves no longer able to compete in the midst of global change.
 
THEMES AND SUB-THEMES OF THE COURSE
 

1. Introduction
2. Analysis of the Learning Organization
1. The knowledge era in global competition—Chawla Introduction
2. Cultural assumptions that must be changed—Chawla Ch. 1
3. Guiding Ideas of the Learning Organization
1. Techniques when we face discontinuities and rapid change—Chawla Ch. 2
2. Valuing gender perspectives in learning cultures—Chawla Ch.3
3. Mastering change—Chawla Ch.4
4. The renaissance of learning in business—Chawla Ch. 5
5. The transformational leader in learning organizations—Chawla Ch. 6
6. Blocks to learning: single-loop approaches and Accelerating learning: double-loop approaches —Chawla Ch.7
4. Theories/Methods/Processes in Learning Organizations
1. Stories for learning—Chawla Ch. 8
2. Extending the learning organization beyond the busienss—Chawla Ch. 9
3. Dialogue—Chawla Ch. 10
4. Mindshift and breakthrough thinking—Chawla Ch. 11
5. Language as action—Chawla Ch. 12
6. Generative Coaching and learning—Chawla Ch. 13
7. Building Learning Labs—Chawla Ch. 14
8. Higher Order Learning—Chawla Ch. 17
5. Infrastructure in Learning Organizations
1. Learning Communities as an alternative to the expert model—Chawla Ch. 18
2. Learning out of context—Chawla Ch. 19
3. Vitalizing work design—Chawla Ch. 20
4. Developmental strategies for the knowledge era—Chawla Ch. 21
5. Learning as an organization: a journey into chaos—Chawla Ch. 24
6. Arenas of Practice for Learning Organizations
1. Restructuring Education, designing tomorrow’s workplace—Chawla Ch. 26
2. Transforming mental models—Chawla Ch. 27
3. Full Case Study: Medical metaphor and corporate practice—Chawla Ch. 29
4. Case Study: Shared values—Chawla Ch. 30
5. Case Study: Creating a Learning Organization by Accident—Chawla Ch. 31
6. Case Study: Beyond Ego to Wisdom, The Eicher Experience—Chawla Ch. 32
7. Conclusions: Reflections of Learning from a Gathering of Experts—Chawla p. 501-509

1. Introduction
2. Analysis
1. Empowerment and total quality programs require that all levels of the organization continually learn as rapidly as possible
2. Understanding how building a learning organization penetrates the bedrock assumptions of our culture.
3. Guiding Ideas
1. Techniques for implementing learning when we face discontinuous and rapid change
2. Giving the gift of your being yourself by authentic dialogue
3. How to become more focused, faster, flexible, friendly and have fun to achieve total transformation
4. How to move executives from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence and thus find the possibility to want to learn more
5. How the leader can be responsible for helping corporations foster growth and lead cultural change
6. Finding out how double-loop learning helps us to grow past the conditions of the old paradigm
4. Theories/Methods/Processes in Learning Organizations
1. How story forms are effective ways of creating a world
2. How the deepest learning occurs simultaneously a the most personal and the most global levels
3. What new capacities that dialogue can build within us and what factors contribute to our achieving authentic dialogue
4. How strategic dialogue can initiate and link generative conversations and creative actions throughout the organization
5. How language is a medium of change and also a perpetuating medium through the metaphors embedded in the organization
6. How a learning journey invol es more sensitivity and needs to place importance on the whole
7. The advantages and disadvantages of capturing mental models, converting them into a mathematical format, and then using a computer to simulate them
8. The learning implications for what Einstein meant when he said that "Thre world we have made...creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we have created them..."
5. Infrastructure in Learning Organizations
1. The implications for the learning community when the role of expert and learner are recognized to be arbitrary delineations
2. How to implement the three building blocks of a learning context: continuous learning, architecture of learning and cultural/emotional support of learning
3. Guidelines for assessing whether a chosen method for learning as a sound base in its design
4. A proactive stance to establish the conditions and pathways for self-renewing and reflective organizations
5. How systems theory and chaos theory help form a model of social change within human collectives
6. Arenas of Practice for Learning Organizations
1. How to best structure tomorrow’s workplace through today’s classrooms which give us the fundamentals of organizational life (thinking, interacting, relating, learning, working)
2. What workplace educators can do formally and informally to transform the mental models that constitute a corporate culture
3. How the organizational learning metaphor offers a resolution to the battle between standardization of procedures and creativity
4. How to stop plunging to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs every Monday morning and instead foster trust, teamwork, champions, and the capacity for constant change
5. Why an organization should not focus on creating learning itself but rather on creating unique structures and processes that allow it to flourish
6. How moving beyond the ego provides an opportunity to be in touch with each individual’s connectedness to others
7. How the various authors and experts in the field of the learning organization summarize their approaches and how the larning organization gives competitive advantage among world-class corporations

1. Lectures by the Professor on the chapters in the syllabus
2. Examinations on the material in the syllabus
3. A final project done in teams on a related topic
4. Discussion of cases as provided in each chapter of the text and final full chapter cases
5. Student presentations of final projects and class discussion of each

1. Introduction
2. Analysis of the Learning Organization
1. The knowledge era in global competition—Chawla Introduction
2. Cultural assumptions that must be changed—Chawla Ch. 1
3. Guiding Ideas of the Learning Organization
1. Techniques when we face discontinuities and rapid change—Chawla Ch. 2
2. Valuing gender perspectives in learning cultures—Chawla Ch.3
3. Mastering change—Chawla Ch.4
4. The renaissance of learning in business—Chawla Ch. 5
5. The transformational leader in learning organizations—Chawla Ch. 6
6. Blocks to learning: single-loop approaches and Accelerating learning: double-loop approaches —Chawla Ch.7
4. Theories/Methods/Processes in Learning Organizations
1. Stories for learning—Chawla Ch. 8
2. Extending the learning organization beyond the busienss—Chawla Ch. 9
3. Dialogue—Chawla Ch. 10
4. Mindshift and breakthrough thinking—Chawla Ch. 11
5. Language as action—Chawla Ch. 12
6. Generative Coaching and learning—Chawla Ch. 13
7. Building Learning Labs—Chawla Ch. 14
8. Higher Order Learning—Chawla Ch. 17
5. Infrastructure in Learning Organizations
1. Learning Communities as an alternative to the expert model—Chawla Ch. 18
2. Learning out of context—Chawla Ch. 19
3. Vitalizing work design—Chawla Ch. 20
4. Developmental strategies for the knowledge era—Chawla Ch. 21
5. Learning as an organization: a journey into chaos—Chawla Ch. 24
6. Arenas of Practice for Learning Organizations
1. Restructuring Education, designing tomorrow’s workplace—Chawla Ch. 26
2. Transforming mental models—Chawla Ch. 27
3. Full Case Study: Medical metaphor and corporate practice—Chawla Ch. 29
4. Case Study: Shared values—Chawla Ch. 30

1. Case Study: Creating a Learning Organization by Accident—Chawla Ch. 31
2. Case Study: Beyond Ego to Wisdom, The Eicher Experience—Chawla Ch. 32

1. Conclusions: Reflections of Learning from a Gathering of Experts—Chawla p. 501-509