Reference no: EM133306172

Assignment: ORGANIZING with which managers need to be familiar. Researchers have concluded that the structures and strategies of organizations worldwide are similar, "while the behavior within them is maintaining its cultural uniqueness." What does this mean for designing effective and efficient structures? When designing or changing structure, managers may need to think about the cultural implications of certain design elements. For instance, one study showed that formalization-rules and bureaucratic mechanisms-may be more important in less economically developed countries and less important in more economically developed countries where employees may have higher levels of professional education and skills. 48 Other structural design elements may be affected by cultural differences as well. How Do You Build a Learning Organization? Doing business in an intensely competitive global environment, British retailer Tesco realized how important it was for its stores to run well behind the scenes. And it does so using a proven "tool" called Tesco in a Box, which promotes consistency in operations as well as being a way to share innovations. Tesco is an example of a learning organization, an organization that has developed the capacity to continuously learn, adapt, and change.49 The concept of a learning organization doesn't involve a specific organizational design per se, but instead describes an organizational mind-set or philosophy that has significant design implications. In a learning organization, employees are practicing knowledge management by continually acquiring and sharing new knowledge and are willing to apply that knowledge in making decisions or performing their work. Some organizational design theorists even go so far as to say that an organization's ability to learn and to apply that learning as they perform the organization's work may be the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. What would a learning organization look like? As you can see in Exhibit 6-12, the important characteristics of a learning organization revolve around organizational design, information sharing, leadership, and culture. Let's take a closer look at each.

Question: What types of organizational design elements would be necessary for learning to take place? In a learning organization, it's critical for members to share information and collab- orate on work activities throughout the entire organization-across different functional specialties and even at different organizational levels-through minimizing or eliminating the existing structural and physical boundaries. In this type of boundaryless environment, employees are free to work together and collaborate in doing the organization's work the EXHIBIT 6-12 Characteristics of a Learning Organization Organizational Design