Learning and Competitive Advantage

Organizational Learning and Competitive Advantage

[Name of the institute]Organizational Learning and Competitive Advantage

Introduction

To earn a profit and to operate business in a lucrative way is the core ambition of a business. Every organization tries to achieve this objective by hook or by crook. In order to achieve this core objective organizations devise various effective strategies that help them in the attainment of their objective that is to earn a profit. Some strategies that some organizations adopt become famous because of its uniqueness and effective implementation. One of such practice is effective management of employees' learning and knowledge management. For that organizations use benchmarking techniques. In past years, benchmarking was just considered as a support role in an organization. But in today's era management of employees' learning through benchmarking possesses strategic dimension in organization. In an organization, where the management of employees' learning through benchmarking is considered as a source of competitive advantage they actually value employees as a real source of competitive advantage. By taking a step ahead in innovation, efficiency and production as compared to the competitors companies like British Airways, British Petroleum, Tesco are able to prove the practice of benchmarking helpful in creating a supporting and comfortable environment for employees and strong corporate culture that can provide superior returns for the shareholders. Achieving all this is not easy because the concept of globalization has made the role of benchmarking more complicated. This creates new challenges. These new challenges include management of employees, devising employees' regulations and implementing miraculous benefits of technology in performing various practices related to the learning of employees such as online benefits program, e-learning and adoption of best practice. Now, benchmarking or learning of employees is so vital that it helps the organization to gain competitive advantage. The aim and objective of this paper is also to undertake discussion about the topic that benchmarking and the learning of employees is something that allows an organization to achieve competitive advantage.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a method for continuous improvement that involves an ongoing and systematic evaluation and incorporation of external products, services and processes recognized as best practice.

Benchmarking includes a set of tools to systematically locate, evaluate and organize the use of all the positive merits of the experience of others in their company. Benchmarking is used to create a competitive advantage in solving problems related to quality, cost and delivery. Benchmarking can be regarded as a tool for quality management when a firm practices functional benchmarking (Dattakumar and Jagadeesh 2003, pp. 191).

The term benchmarking refers to a methodology in which an organization identify, learn and apply the most effective practices of other organizations in the industry in order to improve own actions, products and capabilities. The main purpose of this assessment comparative is continuous improvement in organization and learning from others. It is a concept that originated and is used in the management of companies (Zairi 1994, pp. 17).

Elaboration of the Concept

Tracking a firm's performance is not just the responsibility of the financial experts ...