Organizational Learning Seminar

Guest Talk by Ms Waltraut Ritter

Ms Waltraut Ritter is an experienced practitioner and facilitator of information and knowledge management. After the Seminar, there are a few questions that deeply impress me.
Q1: How do we know that we learnt? Or how do the organizations know that they learnt?
Q2: What is the different between individual learning and organizational learning? How to align individual goal with organization?


How do we know that we learnt? Or how do the organizations know that they learnt?
Learning is a process that brings together cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences and experiences for acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in one's knowledge, skills, values, and world views (Illeris, 2000; Ormorod, 1995). (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_(education) ) Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, perferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. Human learning may occur as part of education or personal development. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation.Moreover, learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning)

Own daily example of learning:
When I was young, I mostly learnt by observing the surrounding (Visual learner) and listening to teachers (Auditory learner). When I grew up, I need to follow teachers’ prescriptive instruction to do the laboratory myself (Kinesthetic learner) during the Chemistry or Physics lessons.

Actually, I think that learning is happening everywhere at anytime. Not only attaining classes, but also watching TV or talking with friends. Therefore, remind yourself to gain more knowledge all the time.


What is the different between individual learning and organizational learning?
Comparing between individual learning and organizational learning:
For Individual Learning, people have different learning styles, although they have similar educational background or experience. They learn from understanding and solving problem alone. Even the same thing, different people may have different interpretations.
For Organizational Learning, learning is the ongoing renewal capacity of an organization. It depends on organizations’ strategies and management. It can increase competitive advantage of organization through collective learning and continuous change in this dynamic world.

How to align individual goal with organization?
Organization should motivate their employees to achieve organizational mission and goal by Single-Loop and Double-Loop Learning. Through discussion and sharing of different departments to govern individual and organization value, so that the intersection of them can be found. The employees can easily fulfill common goal with self-complacence.