Managing Organisational Change Questions

Question 1: How does organisational learning (OL) differ to individual learning?

Organizational learning is actually the process through which organizations learns the ways to change  as  well  as improving themselves constantly. Alternatively, individual learning is only involved in an individual learning and development.  Hence, the organizational learning differs from individual learning since helps  the organizations  that embrace it to move beyond only  solving the problems that exist to gaining the ability to  constantly improve. Therefore, it results  to a learning organization development in which the empowered members usually takes  the responsibility to change the organization as well as learning how  to  do it more better always (Cummings & Worley, 2008).

 Question 2: Identify the steps for the application of knowledge management

There are three main steps  that  are involved in the  application of the knowledge management such as generating knowledge, organising knowledge and distributing  knowledge. The first, step which is the generating knowledge involves the identification of the kinds of knowledge capable of creating the most organisational value and thereby creating mechanisms to increase the stock of that knowledge (Cummings & Worley, 2008). Moreover, the organising stage put the knowledge that is valued into a form that  is readily usable by the organisational members as well as refining it to increase its value to the involved users. However, the distribution of knowledge which is the final stage involves creating mechanisms to facilitate the members to have accessibility to the required knowledge.

 Question 3: Define built-to-change. Give an example of each component.

The built  to change is the newest continuous change  intervention which is involved in the design of the entire organisation for change  whereas not for mere normal operations. Hence, these built-to-change organisations have the ability to constantly change since it is only the most suitable competitive advantage source (Cummings & Worley, 2008). However, it has various components  such as managing the right talents for change, a reward system for motivating performing employees, flat, lean and flexible organization structure, widespread information and decision process as well as a shared leadership.

 Question 4: What is the difference between OL and knowledge management?  Give an example of each.

Organisational  knowledge enhances  the capability of an organisation to acquire  as well  as developing new knowledge whereas knowledge management focus of  the ways in which the acquired knowledge can be properly organised and used for improving performance. Examples of organisational learning involve structural design, team building and employee involvement for practical guidance while  examples of knowledge management are electronic forms of knowledge storage as well as transmission including data warehousing, intranets and knowledge repositories (Cummings & Worley, 2008).

 Question 5: What is organisation knowledge? Why is it important?

The organisation knowledge is the combination of  the two learning processes, that is, organisational learning and knowledge management and it mainly depends on the competitive strategy of the organisation (Cummings & Worley, 2008). The importance of organisation knowledge is that it directly influences the organisation performance outcome such as customer service and product  quality. Hence, it leads  to high performance depending of the extent of relevance and effective application to the organisation strategy. For instance, customer-driven organisations needs timely as well as relevant information on their customer needs.

 Question 6: What are the series of activities involved in a self-design change strategy?

Self-design change strategy involves various  steps that must be taken into consideration. The first step involves the laying of foundation which provides the organisation members with the required basic knowledge as well as information required  to get started with the adaptive  change. The second step is the designing whereby an organisation designs as well as innovations are generated towards supporting the corporate strategy and values (Cummings & Worley, 2008). The final stage is the implementation and assessing involved in the implementation of the designed organisation changes and it involves a continuous cycle of action learning, changing behaviours and structures, assessing the progress as well as making modifications when necessary.

 Question 7: What is a virtuous spiral? What are its benefits?

This is the last initiative of  the  transition of an organisation to a built-to-change organisation and it involves bringing together of the other prior processes in order to pursue a series of temporary competitive advantages (Cummings & Worley, 2008).  It is usually based on the logic that in turbulent situations, success is achieved from the identification of future opportunities, organising to take advantage of them and also moving to the next opportunity whenever things change. This ensures that  these organisations maintain competitive advantage even in the drastic changing environments. They also constantly work to balance both long and short runs hence sustaining the organisation performance.

Reference

Cummings, T.G. & Worley, C.G. (2008). Organization development & change (9^th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.