Introduction
The particular organization that will be focused on in this organizational learning and systems thinking report will be the Fill Support Corporation. I have worked for the said organization in the past and I can still clearly remember the challenging but enriching working experiences I encountered during my stay there. Fill Support is an internet marketing company that hires both virtual and office-based workers to cater the needs of an overwhelming number of internet marketing clients. As an internet marketing company, Fill Support accepts various types of jobs and orders coming from their over 1000 individual and independent clients. A large percentage of their clients are private companies; a small but still significant percentage of their clients are independent blog owners. The company was established on the 5th of July 2002 with only 25 members including all members of the staff and executive management. Now, over 1000 people constitute the total number of people working for the company. It has experienced exponential growth due to popularization of the internet and internet-based sites. The growth of e-commerce was also one of the biggest factors that ushered this company to the position where it is now. As of the moment, Fill Support stated that they will be focusing more in their social media efforts. This is because in the past few years where social media usage was at its peak, the company planners were not able to take advantage of the possible strategies that they could have utilized with the aid of the top social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now, they are diverting their efforts to social media-based projects. Such step will surely cause several noticeable changes with the way the whole organization, including all of its employees (project managers, writers, executives, administrative personnel, etc.), works. What I am trying to figure out in this report is whether Fill Support’s practices are in line with the organizational learning and systematical thinking theories and concepts that we in our class have studied.
Critical Evaluation of the Organizational Practices and Systematic Thinking
Based on the different classifications of enterprise that were presented by Ackoff (1994) and their definitions, I have come to realize that Fill Support Corporation can be best classified as a Social system. Firstly, it cannot be a mechanical system because it does not simply exist to do a certain function for a particular entity. Secondly, it cannot be classified as an organismic system because although it is a part of a bigger system or environment, it is very unlikely for the employees and other members of an organization to be included in the list of significant parts of an organismic entity.
Based on Ackoff’s (1994) findings, the definition of a social system is the most compatible description we could pair with the subject company. Besides, these different methods of classifying a system are more conceptual than real. One can classify any given entity as something that resembles mechanical, organismic or social system characteristics. However, it all usually boils down to how does one entity behave or look like if perceived as such type of entity.
One good thing about the management practices at Fill Support is the fact that their educational and experience requirements for several of their low to middle level positions are not that high compared to the requirements of other companies. This encourages diversity in the workplace. Also, their employees are not confined to a specific job description only. All personnel are trained to be versatile. Meaning, they can be given administrative and project-based assignments by their boss without having to worry whether they can accomplish such assignments or not (Senge, 1990).
There are two types of Employees at Fill Support: The virtual and the office-based employees. Since most of the job includes handling of administrative tasks and working on different content development projects, I can see that the jobs and tasks of an office-based employee and a virtual employee are almost identical. The salary that a regular and accepted employee can receive from the management varies. Office-based employees receive a monthly fixed salary regardless of the amount of projects they have finished or how heavy their workload had been for the past month. Virtual employees on the other hand do not receive a monthly fixed salary. Their salary is based on the amount of projects they have finished. However, the good thing here is that they are not required to do or handle administrative tasks unlike the office-based workers. I could definitely see some bias with regards to the way the management assigns pending projects to the employees. I could see back then how virtual workers struggle to get assigned to a content writing project while office-based worker are continuously working because of multiple assigned projects. I have also observed the lack of interaction between the employees. Most of the employees I have encountered, while I was still working there as a part of the content management team, are introverts. This could be attributed to their personality types and the nature of our jobs—a topic which is well outside the scope of this report. Nevertheless, such factors can still play a major role in determining whether an organization is a learning organization or not (Garvin, Edmondson, & Gino, 2008).
These practices and organizational norms only tells us that Fill Support does not practice organizational management or learning, at least according to what Ackoff (1994) said about organizational learning and systems thinking. He said that “Synergy is an increase in the value of the parts of a system that derives from their membership in the system, that is, from their interactions with other parts of the system.” The parts of the system that the author was pertaining to in that statement are the employees. If employees will not work together as a team or as a whole organization, the company’s goals and potential will never be realized.
Single-Loop and Double-Loop Learning
For an organization like Fill Support whose survival is dependent on the revenues and profits it can generate from the collective efforts and output of its employees, learning and development are important. Identifying errors and doing the necessary steps to correct them are two ways that are almost always associated with learning. There are 2 types of learning that many enterprise dynamics experts believe could help any organization be organizational and systematical in solving problems and more importantly, correcting errors that may impair the organization’s progress and potential: single-loop learning and double-loop learning. The purpose of identifying such type of organizational learning is to determine what type of learning is encouraged or practiced by the Fill Support management.
One can know whether an organization practices a single-loop learning when the errors are already identified and corrected but no evident or significant changes took place in the organization’s policies, objectives, and other governing variables that played a role in the previous error. Double-loop learning happens when errors have been detected and corrected, but possible underlying causes like the norms, company objectives and policies can be noticeably changed. In a way, we can say that the single-loop type of learning offers the most immediate solution to an error because it does not require a lot of changes to take place. The double-loop type of learning on the other hand will most likely require more time because of the different organizational aspects that can be affected (Smith, 2001). As a quick summary, one could argue that single-loop learning is a swift, fast, but a short-term solution to errors and mistakes while a double-loop type of learning is a slow, progressive, but a long-term solution to errors and mistakes. Both single and double-loop learning could take place at the same time. An organization may not really benefit from practicing a very dynamic organizational policy, objective, or norms. It cannot change a vital aspect of the company every time and error occurs or is detected. It is usually the role of the management to determine what type of learning will be the most effective for the enterprise and its employees in any given situation. Factors that may influence the decision here are the time-constraint and the future of the enterprise.
Based on my observations, Fill Support is an organization that utilizes single-loop learning. Firstly, the project managers are very strict when it comes to the projects being assigned to the employees. If something goes wrong, the fault will automatically be transferred to the employees and not to anyone else. This may be due to the fact that customer service and satisfaction are the two foundations of the company but such reasons are still not enough to justify the validity of such norms.
In relation to the two models described in Smith’s (2001) work about theories of actions, I could say that most workers employed by Fill Support exhibit the Model II characteristics. Although it is not right to generalize, majority of the workers there seem to be more objective. They do not pass the blame to other people. Employees there also do not have a lot of means to practice their defense-mechanisms. The result is a smoother transfer of information from one work unit to another, more valid information (because of the objectiveness of the employees), increased likelihood of double-loop learning, minimally defensive relationships, high freedom of choice, and an internal commitment. All of these things can actually be seen as positive things that can bring about positive changes to the company.
The Learning Organization Survey
Summary
Score (%)
Leadership that Reinforces learning
Learning Process Composite
Learning Environment Composite
Concrete Learning Processes and Practices
Experimentation
Information Collection
Education and Training
Information Transfer
Supportive Learning Environment
Psychological Safety
Appreciation of Differences
Openness to New Ideas
Time for Reflection
Interpretation
Based on the results of the Learning Organization Survey, I can agree to the truth that Fill Support lies somewhere around the middle between a learning and a stagnant organization. This can be actually good because it means that the management is doing ways to improve the quality of the available services. It is just that there are some areas that need more focus or improvement such as the “time for reflection” and “information collection” areas. Again, this may be attributed to the more dominant type of learning (whether single or double-loop learning). One of the areas where Fill Support received the highest scores is in the Openness to New Ideas area where it got a score of 68. This is because in every project, the project managers try to identify which part took the longest time to accomplish. Errors and some minor difficulties are usually detected on this part and based on the situation, a single-loop or double-loop type of learning can be applied.
Practical Recommendations
As an individual who was able to see and interpret the organizational practices and systems thinking of Fill Support Corporation, I can attest to the truth that there are a lot of things to improve with this company. First and foremost, is the time for reflection. Due to the sheer number of projects that workers taken on every day, they usually do not have the time to reflect on the things that they may have learned while they were finishing their tasks. What the management can do is to make sure that every employee gets a certain amount of rest after every project so that they can properly absorb the new learning and knowledge they acquired. Another thing that needs to be improved would be the leadership. Most of the interactions within the company happen between the project managers and the clusters of employees assigned to different individual content management and development projects. The ones that assume the roles of a leader are the project managers. The smoothness and the success of a project rest in their hands. They are responsible for the integration of every writer’s work. However, they should never forget to motivate, direct and coach their subordinates as to what, how, and when to do something. Usually, the more detailed an instruction is, the more easily it can be followed.
Works Cited
Smith, M. (2001). Chris Argyrus Theories of Action, Double-loop Leanring and Organizational Learning. The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. Accessed July 2012. Web.
Ackoff, R. (1994). Systems Thinking and Thinking Systems. System Dynamics Review. Page 7. Print.
Senge, P. (1990). The Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations. Sloan Management Review. Print.
Garvin, D., Edmondson, A., & Gino, F. (2008). Is yours a learning organization. Harvard Business Review. Print.
