A learning organization is an organization that has developed a capacity to continuously adapt and change because of its members take an active role in identifying and resolving work-related issues (Robbins, 2015, p. 107).
In a learning organization, it's critical for members to share information and collaborate on work activities throughout the entire organization- across different functional specialties and even at different organizational levels (Robbins, 2015, p107).
When planning business activity, all companies need to be able to forecast future development on the market on which they wish to operate. That will help companies to compete with one another.
Competitiveness is the ability of the company to compete, to be efficient and effective in its operation; to be better than its opponents, who seek to achieve the same economic results of sustainability and development. This is carried out through the production of goods and services in accordance with the wishes and needs of its buyers, in such a way that it provides them with the best price / benefit ratio that they can obtain in the market.
The concept of competitive strategy is the axis on which companies currently move and, as Porter (1989) underlines, the intention is to obtain, through the definition and operation of the necessary actions, a position that allows them to survive and grow in their environment.
The incorporation of the company's knowledge into the generation of strategies that made it more competitive created a new concept in the administrative sciences, known as Knowledge Management.
This concept can be defined as a systematic process of searching and finding, sifting and selecting, organizing, arranging and storing, recovering and sharing the information generated by the company's own dynamics, in order to transform it in a proper knowledge of the organization, according to its cultural characteristics.
Following Kim (1993) it can be considered that the personal learning of the agents will generate organizations that learn. A learning company is composed of people who learn, who are able to combine responsibility, honesty, curiosity, integrity and discipline to set and achieve their goals.
It is evident, then, that the learning in the company – understood as the creation and diffusion of own knowledge, is the result of the social interaction of the people in their work and the source of the competitive advantages that it requires to remain active in business.
David Stamps (1997) develops the concept that organizational learning, as a human phenomenon, is fundamentally a social activity, framed within the culture of the organization. To achieve its development, it must open spaces so that knowledge and individual skills are put into practice and are not restricted by its authorities.
The questionnaire elaborated by Watkins and Marsick (1998) is the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ), which besides being the most complete according to Moilanen (2005), has also been the object of further investigation and validation.
The DLOQ was developed to measure the learning culture of a learning organization. It consists of seven dimensions, plus two scales to measure financial performance and knowledge performance (Marsick & Watkins, 2003).
The seven dimensions and their definitions are the following:
1)Create opportunities for continuous learning. The job is designed so that people can learn at it.
2)Promote inquiry and dialogue. People acquire productive reasoning skills to express their points of view, and listen and inquire the thoughts of others.
3)Create systems to capture and share learning. High and low technology systems are created to share learning and integrate them into work
4)Encourage team collaboration and learning. The work is designed to use groups and thus access different ways of thinking.
5)Provide strategic leadership for learning. Leaders model and support learning; Leadership strategically uses learning to obtain better results.
6)Empower people towards a collective vision. People are involved in order to establish, appropriate and implement a joint vision.
7)Connect the organization with its environment. People are helped to perceive the effects of their work on the company
Llovera (2016) defined the advantages of organizational learning as:
1)A collective experience: when the organization develops a learning culture and becomes a company that learns then the training process becomes an integral part of the company, it becomes interactive and interdependent.
2)Strategic Learning: using learning as a strategy tool of the organization requires that there is be a vision aligned with the action, that the meaning of this strategic movement be shared by the entire organization and that the necessary team-work arise to achieve the objectives.
3)Appropriate response to changes: the existence of new regulations, new competitors, new technologies or the development of a new managerial vision, drive companies to change and learn in order to adapt. Those that do not manage to remain in time or if they remain, fail to grow.
4)Results measurement: once learning has become a core part of the organization, management indicators can be determined to measure the results of the training process within the company.
Root III, (2018); explains as disadvantages of organizational learning the following:
1)The assignment of formal roles are not properly executed.
2)Administrative Challenges: organizational development adds responsibility to the employees and managers to maintain open communication and constantly reevaluate the needs of the organization.
3)Time-Consuming: when a company engages in organizational development, there are processes that can become time-consuming and slow its productivity.
Knowledge management can be considered as the relevant dynamic capacity of the company and the main driver of the development of other skills and competencies (Ordóñez and Perreño, 2005).