Learning Organisation

Define the concept of Learning organisation ? What are the philosophy and characteristic of learning organisation ? how it differ from traditional organisation ? how to develop a learning organisation ?

A learning organisation is one that is successful at acquiring, cultivating, and applying knowledge that can be used to help it adapt to change. Learning organisations are skilled at experimenting with new approaches, learning from the experiences, and best practices of others. A learning organisation specifically tries to develop new skills; new knowledge, new cultural norms, and new insights. Moreover, one of its key characteristics is how an organisation can unlearn previous behaviours and develop new cognitive frameworks. Training, organisational behaviour management, and discipline are the three systematic approaches of learning organisation. It has Culture based on the notion that learning is central to success and effectiveness.

Peter M. Senge in his book, “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization”, described a learning organization “as a place where people continually expand their capacity to create results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to learn”.

David Garwin defines a learning organisation as ^"an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights."

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Power and Sources of Power

Concept of Power ?  distinguish between power, authority and influence. What are the various sources of power ?

CONCEPT OF POWER

Power is said to be like love, impossible to define but easy enough to recognise (Martin, 1977). Power is understood as the ability to influence other people and events.

In the words of White and Bednar, "Power is the ability, to influence people of things, usually obtained through the control of important resources."

A comprehensive definition of power is given by Dahl (1957), when he wrote that "A has power over l3 to the extent that he can get B to do something B would not otherwise do." Russell (1938) conceptualizes power as "the production of intended effects."

Dehl's definition suggests that power must overcome resistance in order to succeed whereas according to Russell, power need not imply resistance. All the above definitions suggest that power involves compulsion.

These has been a recent trend towards empowerment, the shifting of power away from managers and into bands of subordinates. Empowerment occurs in varying degrees in different organisations.

DIFFERENTIATING POWER FROM AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE

Usually, the term power is intertwined with another concept, authority. But there is a difference between the two concepts. Power refers to the capacity to influence others. The person who possesses power has the ability to manipulate or change the behaviour of others. Authority, on the other hand, is the source of power. Authority is legitimate and it confers legitimacy to power. Power itself need not be legitimate.

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Persuasion and Persuasion Process

Write brief on Persuasion – meaning, Theory, Importance and process ? 

Persuasion : 

Persuasion is the process of changing or reinforcing attitudes, beliefs or behaviour of a person. People respond to persuasive messages in two ways: thoughtfully and mindlessly. When we are in thoughtful mode, the persuasiveness of the message is determined by merits of the message. When we, respond to messages mindlessly, our brains are locked on automatic. We do not have the time, motivation or ability to listen intently. Typically, persuasion is largely dependent upon the attractiveness of the speakers and reaction of the listeners. Persuasion is solely related with communication, learning, awareness and thought.

Meaning of Persuasion :  

The notions of communication, learning, awareness and thought pervade definitions of persuasion. Bettinghaus defines persuasion as "a conscious attempt by one individual to change the attitudes, beliefs or the behaviour of another individual or group of individuals through the transmission of some message". This definition indicates that persuasion is assumed to involve conscious intent on the part of the persuader to affect the receiver of a persuasive message. It involves a selection of a strategy perceived to be most effective and the control of message and environmental variable so as to maximise the likelihood that the strategy will be effective. Much persuasive discourse is indirectly coercive, that is, the persuasive effectiveness of messages often heavily depends on the credibility of threats and the promises preferred by the communicator. For example, if the child perceives that the threatening parent is, for some reason or another, unlikely to suspend the child's allowance, the parent's persuasive messages will have minimum impact on the child's study habits. Persuasion is also valued as an instrument of democracy. The concept of persuasion has a clear and important focus in the field of marketing; McGuire states it simply as "changing people's attitudes and behaviour through the spoken and written words". 

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Positive Reinforcement Programme

What are the Procedures and rules to follow while implementing Positive Reinforcement Programme ?

Implementing a Positive Reinforcement Programme

If your data reveal that the worker makes the correct response at least once in a while, you need to design a programme that will increase the percentage of correct response. As in anything else there are some basic, general rules that you must master before you implement such a programme. 

Rule 1: Reward Selection  

The only way to increase behaviour without alienating the employee is to make it more rewarding to perform effectively. Before you can change the contingencies in favour of the desired behaviour, you must identify what the employee finds reinforcing. You can only discover this by observing what the employee prefers to do and how he reacts to various rewards. The greatest danger at this point is in managing and the language of the employee. If you think that you can assume that money, praise attention recognition, time-off, or any other common reward is necessarily a reinforcer for an individual employee, you are probably overgeneralising your way into failure as a behaviour manager. Remember that by definition a reinforcer increases the probability of the preceding behaviour. If the frequency of the behaviour doesn't increase, your reward wasn't a reinforcer. The kind of manager who is likely to be reading this chapter is also the kind of manager who would have trouble accepting next week as an extra paid vacation because he would believe that the lost time would interface with his performance. For such a manager both money and time-off fail to function as reinforcers.

The language of the employee leads a behaviour management project astrally when the supervisor decides that he can ask the employee what would be reinforcing rather than directly observing the effects of various rewards. Verbal behaviour is never a substitute of actual observation. At best the questionnaire approach can waste time and create paper work. At worst, it can lead the manager to punish the very behaviours that he wishes to reinforce by using the wrong opportunities as rewards for the right behaviour. Asked in the abstract, our hard-working manager might say that he would love an extra paid week off but this consequence might not reinforce when it came down to taking the time. In the research for rewards, attitude surveys may point a manager in the appropriate direction, but only direct observation of behaviour will identify specific effective reinforcers.

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Counseling Processes and Outcomes

Counselling Process goals and stages of counselling processes  ? What are the outcomes of counselling ?  

Refer :

What is Counselling ? Salientfeatures of counselling ? What are the Qualities of an effective counseler /helper ?

PROCESS GOALS IN COUNSELING

The definition said that counseling is an interactive process characterized by a unique relationship between counselor and client. To understand counseling as a process, one must distinguish between outcome goals and process goals. Outcome goals (described in this article below) are the intended results of counseling. Generally, they are described in terms of what the client desires to achieve as a result of his or her interaction with the counselor. In contrast, process goals are those events the counselors take as helpful and instrumental in bringing about outcome goals. Outcome goals are described in terms of change in the client that will manifest after the counseling and outside the counselor's office. Process goals are plans for events that take place during the counseling sections and in the counselor's office. They are events that the counselor considers helpful and instrumental in achieving outcome goals.

Process goals can also be described in terms of the counselor's actions and at other times in terms of effect to be experienced by the client. For example, a counselor may think, "If I am to help this client, I must actively listen to what he is saying and understand the significance of his concerns for his present and future well-being. I must understand how the attitudes he is describing influences the way he behaves towards significant others. I must understand the surrounding circumstances (including cultural background) that relate to his concerns, and I must understand the reinforcing events that support his behaviour". All of these statements are process goals that relate to the counselor's behaviour.

Another kind of process goal refers to the way the consumer can act as a model for new ways of behaving. By modeling appropriate responses to frustration, disappointment, or negative feelings, the counselors indirectly teaches the client alternatives to accustomed ways of responding. For example, a counselor who deals assertively to a chronically late client is demonstrating to the client an alternative way to cope with feelings of frustration.  

STAGES OF THE COUNSELING PROCESS :

A process is an identifiable sequence of events taking place over time. Usually there is the implication of progressive stages in the process. The stages if the counseling are discussed below: 

Stage I: Initial Disclosure

At the beginning of counseling, the counselors and clients typically do not know one another well. Neither participant can know in advance the direction their discussion will ultimately take, and the client is probably a bit anxious about disclosing concerns because s/he is not sure how the counselor will receive the disclosures. Without disclosure, counseling is an empty process.

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Counseling and Counselor Qualities

What is Counseling ? Salient features of counseling ? What are the Qualities of an effective counselor / helper ? 

Counseling : People seek the service of professional helpers-counselors, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrist - when their capacities for responding to the demands of life are strained, when desired growth seems unattainable, when important decisions elude resolution, and when natural support systems are unavailable or insufficient. Sometimes the person in need of help is urged or required to seek counseling by a third party, spouse, parent, employer, teacher, or judge who believes the individual is failing to manage some important aspects of life effectively.

The purpose of counseling, broadly conceived, is to enable the client to cope with life situations, to reduce stress, to engage in growth related activity, and to make effective and important decisions. Counselors increase their control over present adversity and present future opportunity as a consequence of counseling process.

Persons of any age, in any walk of life, and with almost any kind of problems can be helped to gain power over the adversities and opportunities of their lives. Counseling to achieve client empowerment is viewed by some as a generic process that includes same elements inherent of the context in which it is used. It does not matter whether it is performed in an organization, school, hospital or in a community counseling clinic, the basic structure of the helping process remains same. Let us examine a few salient processing of counseling in general in the next section. 

How counselling differ from psychotherapy ?

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Communication Barriers

What are the barriers to communication and how effective communication can be made ?

COMMUNICATION BARRIERS :

The image and credibility of the sender, stereotyping, past experiences, overexposure to data, attitudes, mindsets, perceptual filters, trust and empathy all impact on what receivers receive and how they interpret its meaning. These communication barriers occur in everyday business communications.

Misinterpretation occurs when the receiver understands the message to his or her own satisfaction but not in the sense that the sender intended. Misinterpretation can be a consequence of sender or channel noise, poor listening habits, erroneous inferences on the part of the receiver, or differing frames of reference. An example of this occurs when unclear instructions lead employees to "hear" the wrong procedures for doing their work.

1.   Frames of Reference: A combination of past experience and current expectations often leads two people to perceive the same communication differently. Although each hears the actual words accurately, s/he may catalogue those words according to his or her individual perceptions, or frames of reference (also discussed earlier in this unit).

Within organizations, people with different functions often have different frames of reference. Marketing people may interpret things one-way and production people another. An engineer's interpretation is likely to differ from that of an accountant.

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...

Technology Management

What is technology management ? How technology development progress from invention to innovation ? Explain citing one such example.

 

WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT :

Many factors make up the technology development framework and there are several ways of condensing these into a manageable number of grouping. These factors are grouped around six broad dimensions (as in figure-1) :

1.       Objective

2.       Decision Criteria

3.       Time

4.       Constraints

5.       Activities

6.       Mechanism

Fig-1 : Dimensions of Technology Management

READ MORE >>

READ MORE...