Analysis of Learning Indicators and Collaborative Capacity by Heather Getha Taylor - Book Report/Review Example

Analysis of Learning indicators and collaborative capacity: Applying Learning Principles to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by Heather Getha Taylor In the article “Learning indicators and collaborative capacity: Applying Learning Principles to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security” published in 2008, author Heather Getha Taylor, has tried to prove a positive relationship between collaborative capacity and organizational learning. Speaking about such collaboration emphasis has been laid on U.S. Department of Homeland Security which was set p to foster collaboration among 22 different organizational teams. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed with the important mission of giving protection to American people. The analytical part of the paper focuses on key learning indicators and the results obtained reveal lack of ability to access organizational performance among the DHS employees. According to the author, the department has still not tasted the success of collaboration. For achieving this DHS needs to work hard on the factors like trust, communication and intellectual capital. The Department also needs to utilize creative opportunities and accept leadership and learning. The main research question addressed in this paper is the importance of collaboration across organizational boundaries and its usefulness in achieving public goals? This has also been referred as the ‘emerging condition’ of the research paper (Taylor, 2008, p.126). For answering such question Department of Homeland Security have been chosen as the center of study and the importance of organizational learning for such department has been analyzed. In such a case the hypothesis that has been intended for testing is: existence of a positive relationship between collaborative capacity and organizational learning. Organizational learning is more essential for departments which are in a state of crisis or when organizational activities are leading to relatively high costs of error. The chief features of organizational have been commitment for learning and ability to tolerate error which has contributed to workforce development (Taylor, 2008, p.127). With the prevalence of volatile environments and increasing with passing time, organizational learning has become compulsory for any organization like DHS (Taylor, 2008, pp.127, 129). Keeping all this in backdrop, the author’s consideration of DHS as the central point of study is quite justifiable. Owing to the performance of DHS, following disasters like September 11 attack on World Trade Center and then the Hurricane Katrina incident, there has been a widespread criticism that DHS has simply failed in learning. They have always put in their efforts to control the disasters with the mindset of top down bureaucracy (Taylor, 2008, p.128). The lessons are never learnt from any single event and this gets reflected in the subsequent events. Same kinds of mistakes are clearly visible (Taylor, 2008, p.128). Such findings clearly indicate lack of organizational learning and its necessity. While positing organizational learning as an effective tool for eliminating mistakes and improving performance it is important to differentiate between individual learning and learning at an organizational level. With considerable amount of work and findings associated, the author has clearly presented this differentiation through their respective definitions and purpose and by this he has also shown the importance of organizational learning. Individual learning occurs with development of knowledge among members through sources like education, gaining experience or through experimentation. But for organizational learning such knowledge should be retained by the systems as it gets transferred from the individuals (Taylor, 2008, p.128). The purpose suggests that organizational learning takes care completely of the organization needs and is distributed among its members (Taylor, 2008, p.128). It has always been the organizations whose values and behavior have been preserved over time. Herein lays the importance of organizational learning with members entering and also leaving it (Taylor, 2008, p.129). The author has introduced action learning as a powerful tool in this article which would help to overcome disorders within an organization. This is thought to facilitate employees to perform better. The paper tries to justify such incorporation. Under action learning real problem solving is done among a small group of people. It also stresses on their learning area and to what extent it is beneficial for the group (Taylor, 2008, p.130). Such action learning targets a ‘set’ of individuals and helps in better future performance by recalling learnt lessons (Taylor, 2008, p.130). This brings about the importance of action learning. Its application especially being suited to organization like DHS which is our main area of study provides justification for its inclusion in the paper. Such learning by a small team can in turn contribute to the learning of the larger organization in a group format (Taylor, 2008, p.131). The main challenge before the paper has been to claim the positive relationship between collaborative capacity and organizational learning which it has tried to bring out with the help of various findings and analysis. Throughout the analysis the author has chiefly focused on the key learning indicators for bringing out the relationship. The analysis based on OLDS has been rather incomplete. As regards methodology the paper has not been able to trace any data showing the impact of learning indicators on the federal government directly. Indirect approaches have only been relied upon for analysis purpose. An attempt has been made to track the impact of learning indicators on the federal government by matching questions from the Dimensions of the Learning Organizations Questionnaire (DLOQ) with the questions of 2004 FHCS that were found to match. Enough reasons are there to place reliance on the questions of FHCS, it being a large organization. Validity of DLOQ can also be considered owing to its recommendations among findings. The huge responses to the survey have been a positive point to the indirect approach. Factor analysis have been performed which shows a significant matching of 12 questions of DLOQ with that of FHCS. Selection of best matches through 80% inters -coder reliability rates add to the accuracy of the analysis. However absence of a direct data source for analysis is definitely a limitation of the paper. The author could have added more weightage to the paper, had he managed some direct database for analysis purpose. Moreover only one dimension of the survey has claimed significance. The organizational indicator 1 has been quite successful in measuring gaps between present and excepted performance. Considering such measurements to be accurate it can serve as a benchmark for comparison and check whether organizational learning has been helpful for improving performance. The survey responses have been checked with others as well as employees of DHS (Table 2). The results obtained are found to be statistically significant. This again helps to justify datawise consideration of DHS as the central point of study. This justification has also been proved statistically in this paper. The test performed in table 2 has shown the impact of 8 key indicators in improving collaborative capacity. Good point about the findings in table 2 is it also brings out the negative part- how collaborative capacity is disturbed due to lack of the ability. This, once again echoes the importance of organizational learning on collaboration ability. Learning disorders with their impact are also listed in the paper which is absolutely remarkable (Table 3). It is always important to trace out the obstacles to effective organizational learning and such deficiencies are generally referred as ‘learning barriers’ (Taylor, 2008, p.137). They have the tendency of reducing the learning potential of any organization (Taylor, 2008, p.137). Good to see that in this paper author has provided an explanation of the OLDS and their impacts. However the four potential OLDS chosen for analysis as per the literature review has provided an insufficient description. The author has not even shown any scope for intervention. Without any such interference it is not possible to correct the disorders. This certainly is another loophole in the analytical part of the paper. Finally considerable amount of findings has been gathered on the alternative way-action learning. It is believed that based on past experiences there is a scope for generating new ideas and innovations and perform better in the future (Taylor, 2008, p.140). Speaking of an organization like DHS, action learning can definitely be the most effective tool as it needs to learn a lesson from the previous disasters. The author is quite right in indicating that. The DHS has mostly concentrated on getting results and somewhat ignored past incidents, which should have been the case. Action learning can definitely help in correcting such departmental mistakes. Action learning has undoubtedly emerged as a powerful tool that helps in better future performance which is revealed in this paper. The conclusion drawn at the end of the paper certainly fulfills the author’s objective of showing a positive relationship between collaborative capacity and organizational learning. However the methodological part definitely raises questions. Insufficiency of data is clearly visible and it serves as a negative aspect. Although identifying learning disorders was an achievement, it is also not sufficient. The author definitely suggests an alternative tool like action learning but the paper needs to talk more about such alternatives since it already has a lack of potential disorders. Reference Getha-Taylor, H (2008). Learning indicators and Collaborative Capacity: Applying Action Learning Principles to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, PAQ Summer. Read More