Effecting organisation change in Eskom by creating a learning environment

Abstract

The current social, economic and technological climate requires the management of change, which is sustainable. One sustainable corporate quality will be the ability to learn as an organisation. Individuals have traditionally equated learning with the acquisition of knowledge, during early age. The understanding of learning changes as individuals learn as a group within an organisation. Often organisations fail to make the connection between learning and training. To become learning environment there should be an existence of three critical issues, namely, individual, team and organisational learning. The five requirements of learning organisation, namely, systems thinking, personal mastery shared vision, team learning and mental models should be mastered to build a learning environment. A learning environment seeks to create its own future, which assumes that learning is an ongoing and creative process for its members. The concept believes that organisations, which learn develops, adapts and transform itself in response to the needs and aspirations of the people. One of the reasons to fail this connection would be the absence of immediate tangible benefits that organisational learning can provide. The other difficulty could be in translating the theory into practice in the absence of explaining the process sequentially. Organisations are experiencing the need to develop capabilities to handle challenges irrespective of the barriers. The learning organisation constitutes a new perspective on learning which emphasise a shift in organisational management with respect to education, training and development. One way of adopting such capabilities is through adopting the precepts of the learning organisation. The academics, management and practitioners have joined hands in unravelling the concepts and processes of the learning organisation and change management. The study attempts to examine and explain the thinking and synergise various approaches to provide the relationship between the organisation change in Eskom by creating a learning environment. This is not a prescriptive document or critique on the current philosophy, but to create a learning environment model for Eskom within which change will be effected. The information will assist Eskom to accelerate its learning rate to sustain competitive advantage. The organisation needs to embrace change rather than to react to solutions.