Literature review on organizational development and learning

Five principles for organizational learning

The five principles for organizational learning suggests by Senge et al. (2000) can help us to have a better understanding of the organizational development and learning. The five principles are personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning and system thinking. According to the principles, the leaders should have personal visions and awareness in promoting and nourishing organizational learning. They should also act as role models and mentors for the staff, while the staff should have the same vision of the organization, can share their experience and knowledge among themselves. Moreover, they should also view goals and problems of the organization as part of the larger whole instead of isolated issues.


Fullan’s framework

According to Fullan’s framework (2001), effective leaders should have good moral purpose, can understand the change process, build good relationships and knowledge as well as make coherence. Good moral purpose can guide people to do good things which are critical to the long-term success of all organizations. It is also essential for leaders to understand the elements in the process of change, which can raise their awareness while leading the changes. They need to aware that the goal is not to innovate the most, it is not enough to have the best ideas, there may be implementation dip and resistance, there is no a checklist for doing, and re-culturing may be required.

With regard to leadership styles, Goleman (1996) has identified the six leadership styles, i.e. coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. Apart from coercive and pacesetting leaders who require compliance and set high standards for performance of followers respectively are considered to have negative influences on the organization’s performance, all other leadership styles are likely to have positive influences on its performance according to Goleman. Authoritative leaders can mobilize people toward a vision, affiliative leaders can create harmony and build emotional bonds, democratic leaders can forge consensus through participation and coaching leaders can develop people for the future.

Fullan suggests that reorganizing of structure though can make a difference, it is not the main point of achieving success. Instead, transforming the culture or re-culturing, should be the key point of leading change. Moreover, as there is no recipe for change, nor a step-by-step process, leaders need to have different strategies for different circumstances, and cannot generalize from case studies of success. In this regard, to employ different leadership strategies flexibly seems to be more practical thing for leaders to do. Fullan also considers that effective leaders should have high emotional intelligence in addition to intellectual brilliance. They should have high self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation, adequate empathy and good social skills; while the high emotional intelligence can also help them in building good relationship with the team-mates and followers.

Regarding knowledge building, sharing of knowledge, particularly tacit knowledge (i.e. skills, beliefs, and understanding), among individuals with different backgrounds, perspectives, and motivations is critical for organizational knowledge creation. Establishing knowledge sharing practices can also help in creating collaborative culture. Regarding coherence making, leaders need to be aware that when change occurs, there will be disturbances, and the differences of opinion must be reconciled. They should be able to guide people through the differences and lead the organization to shift to a new state as a result of the new interactions and ideas. Such new states represent breakthroughs in which greater coherence is achieved for substantial improvement of the organizations.


Diffusion of innovations model

For diffusion of innovations model introduced by Rogers (1995), diffusion is defined as the process by which an innovation is adopted and gains acceptance by members of a certain community. There are five categories of people in terms of their readiness to adopt new technology, namely innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. A number of factors interact to influence the diffusion of an innovation, and the major factors are the innovation itself. The diffusion of innovation model is considered to have much impact on many disciplines including instructional technology. It may help instructional technologists to explain, predict and account for the factors facilitating or impeding the utilization of a new technology. So, the more thorough understanding on the innovation process and theories, the more likely for them to prepare better and work more effectively with clients and potential adopters (Schiffman, 1991). Teachers can also raise their awareness in this aspect while designing the teaching pedagogies.


References:

Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change, San Francisco, Calif., Jossey-Bass.

Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change. London: Routledge Falmer.

Goleman, D. (2007). The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results. London: Sphere.

Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed). New York: Free Press.

Summary of Session 1 (Learning organization in our workplace)

Based on different people’s sharing on their experience of the learning organization in their working place, it is possible to summarize as follow:

In order to enhance the learning organization in the working place, it is necessary to reflect on the following items and see what can be done to improve.
1. Providing professional training
It is useful to offer training course to the staff/teachers in order to equip them with basic and essential skills in their working area. Beside, the course can also used to share the mission and vision of the company/ school with the staff/teachers to help them understand the background of the company/school. Also, training courses on the newly develop working skills and new trend in the industry should be held to encourage the staffs/ teachers to try new things. Lastly, company/school can also tried to organize some courses which is based on the staff/teachers’ need and interest, the company/ school can based on the feedback and comment from them to decide what kind of course can be included in the training program of staff.

2. Leaders’ characteristic
The leader’s characteristic will affect the learning organization a lot. Some of the leaders which like to dominant all the times may demanded his/her sub-ordinates to follow strict instruction and reject new ideas, this will hinders the learning of the team and also his/her sub-ordinates will become not willing to share their views and idea in improving the working efficiency. On the other hand, if the leader are able to encourage his/her sub-ordinates to discuss when problem arise, to identify the problem together and invite them in some decision making process can encourage the whole company/ school to develop a collaborative working climate and people inside should be able to learn and willing to learn more.

3. Set up and refine of the policy
When problem arise, we should identify the problem together with the staff/ teachers by discussion. And after that, it is essential to think if the solution together, and announce new policy to help to prevent the problem happened again.
In order to keep the efficiency of working, besides announcing new policy we should also refine the original policy time by time.

Even though it seems that there are different ways which can help to increase the learning inside the working place, there is a problem that will hinder the learning organization which is nowadays, teachers are too busy, it maybe a bit difficult for them to follow the suggestions above. Moreover, we have the method, we also need to have the staffs who are willing to try, in order to encourage them, I think shared vision is really important, if the staffs do have a shared vision with the company/school they are working in, then it is much easier to ask them to follow the suggestion.

Prezi: Individual and group training and learning

MITE6238 Final Session on Prezi

Chart 1 Result Comment

Regarding the leadership that reinforces learning, one of us scores extremely high, while all the other ones are in the bottom quartile. It is obviously that most of us see the leadership to be fairly poor and there can be much to be improved. It is evidently that most of us are in organizations whose leadership is rather remote, and we have little participation in the leadership role and cannot understand the actions of the leaders.

Regarding the learning process, the one scores with high in the previous component is also high, lying within the first quartile, whereas all the others are still below the median, with one exceptionally low. Again, most of them view the learning process not as favourable as it could have been, and there could be much improvement in this area.

Regarding the learning environment, the range of response is much closer. Four of the five responses within with 2^nd and 3^rd quartile, and only one is found low in the bottom quartile. Comparatively, the learning environment is better compared to the learning process. It could be because the learning process itself is dynamic and requires a lot more external conditions for it to be effective, whereas the learning environment can be more of a physical nature and with less easily interfered.

Reflection on Teacher Professional Development in Hong Kong

Staff development in schools should be in line with the school goals, which should not be restricted to the acquisition of skills and knowledge, but also professional attitudes, beliefs, values and morality. Apart from formal training courses, which include courses leading to academic and professional qualifications, short courses, workshops and seminars etc., other means of teacher professional development, like teacher appraisal, mentoring, classroom observation and sharing are also generally accepted and considered as effective ways contributing to teacher professional development.

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in Hong Kong as a whole emphasizes on job-related training and seems to have paid less attention to professional, educational and moral development of teachers. The objectives usually focus more on organizational goals, less on personal and individual needs of teachers. Although teacher development should be in line with school goals, it is not necessary restricted to the acquisition of skill and knowledge. It is recommended that a more balanced approach with both personal and organization goals to be met, and both technical and non-technical skills, knowledge and value should be covered. Over-emphasizing organizational goals but ignoring teachers’ professional and personal needs may lead to less enthusiastic, passive and not innovative of teachers. The professional attitudes, values and moral standards, in addition to teaching skills, are all prerequisites of a good teacher. The success of a school not only depends on the teaching and administrative performance of teachers, but also teachers’ loyalty, commitment and identification with the school goals and mission. The establishment of a collaborative culture and good morale among all staff in schools are of vital importance to achieve the school goals and missions.

On the other hand, the courses led and provided by outsiders like advisors or university lecturers are also likely to be too theoretical and too general and may not meet the needs of the school. As such, a planned and balanced approach, in which there is more teacher involvement in planning staff development should be advocated. Moreover, apart from technical training, professional attitudes are also required for teaching professionalism. The all-round and multi-track continuous developmental approach is considered better cater the organization and individual needs.

To better cater the needs of teachers, more school-based teacher development programmes and activities should be planned and conducted. The most commonly conducted CPD activities are workshops and talks, day camps or outings, visits to schools in Mainland China or other countries. Other programmes like mentoring, lesson observation and study, collaborative teaching, lesson planning and preparation and parallel lessons should also be promoted.