Different styles of learning organizations.
A.K. Varoglu, B. Atci, Y. Ercil
Department of System Management Sciences
TMA (Turkish Military Academy),
Turkey
avaroglu @kho.edu.tr, batci@kho.edu.tr, yercil@kho.edu.tr
Organizations are socio-technical systems. Because of that, they have their own
behaviorial styles as in all social systems and complex processes of information gathering
and knowing as in complex adaptive technological systems. From that perspective,
organizational learning process looks more like individual learning process.
Diversity of experience , education, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, expertise, and
opinion can aid any organization in attempting to understand the environmental changes
in organization’s own way.
Learning in an organization means the continuous testing of experience, and the
transformation of that experience into knowledge- accessible to the whole organization,
and relevant to its core purpose. So, different types of experiences and psychologies
cause different types of adaptation.
Kolb suggests that there are two ways of grasping knowledge, apprehension and
comprehension, as well as two ways of transforming this knowledge, via intention
(internal reflection) or extension (external manipulation).
There is an on-going study to test the transformation idea of individual learning styles to
organizational learning behavior, at Turkish Military Academy in Turkey. From that
perspective, David Kolb's LSI (Learning Styles Inventory) is tested in the meaning of
whetter it would be an organizational behavior in a constructivist approach.The results of
this study and the new model based on the different organizational learning types will be
discussed.
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