CAREER DEVELOPMENT IN A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

The five basic concepts of a Learning Organization including Personal Mastery,
Mental Models, Team Building, Shared Vision and System Thinking (Senge, 1999) as
explained in “The Fifth Discipline” are difficult to find in totality as the exact replica
presented in this model. These five concepts are actually the five different processes,
which carry forward the process of development for the organization till the developed
stage of learning organization is achieved. Keeping in view the variation in
characteristics of different organizations, the intensity and the pace witnessed with
respect to these processes may vary from organization to organization. Hence, all the
process may not be going on simultaneously and at the same rate in all organizations
passing through such transformation from conventional to learning status.
In the light of given facts it could therefore be pointed though that in their pursuit
of sustainability, organizations aspiring to achieve the desired status of a learning
organization may not be passing through a concurrent change in all the given five
aspects. Moreover, these organizations may be passing through different phases of
development and could be witnessed at various stages of the processes at different points
in time. This means that some of the attributes of a learning organization could be more
prominent and thus easily detected, whereas, some may be in their embryonic stage and
therefore may not be observable.
Though the fact remains that all the attributes may not be prominent at all time,
still they may be traceable and found indirectly in some activities going on either
independently or in integration with other processes of the organization. For example, an
organization may be following the ground rules of team building and teamwork but may
not have yet achieved a stage where the concept of system thinking is predominantly
prevalent over all of the organization’s systems. Identically, an individual of an
organization may be passing through a transitional stage of developing new mental
models but may not have yet attained the stage of personal mastery.
In a nutshell, all the characteristics identified as that of a learning organization
may not be all seen at one time within the organization and yet that organization may still
be identified as a learning organization. Based on these deliberations, organizations
chosen for this research study falling in category of Learning Organization are the ones