SYSTEM FEEDBACK LOOPS

System Feedback Loops

System Feedback Loops

Question 1

Palm Inc. is the handheld market leader in areas such as mobile business, healthcare, education and government and will continue to extend that lead by delivering compelling business and enterprise mobile information-management solutions, business-focused hardware and software products, robust service and support, and innovative market-leading alliances with developers and solutions providers. Although the mechanism between individual learning and organizational learning is being established and more and more researches contribute to the facilitation of organizational learning cycles, the performance of organizations as a whole is not necessarily to be better (Forrester, 1991).

Most organizations operate actually in the form of division of labor and tasks are interdependent with each other. In carrying out those tasks, various organizational learning processes may exist concurrently and each learning process influences one another. As a result, the performance of organizational learning as a whole is more than the sum of each division's learning. With emphasis on the interrelationships between various learning processes in the organization, this paper attempts to establish an organizational learning feedback system framework to find out the relationships between subunits' learning processes and the performance of the organization.

Causal Loop Diagram

Figure 1 is the reorganizing process of task or the basic unit of organizational learning feedback process. Dashed lines represent information passing, while solid lines represent the physical changes to task organizing ways or task environments.

Question 2

Decision-making responsibility is factored or parceled out among a variety of subunits in the organizations. Division of labor is not only seen in the horizontal working procedures, such as the division of decision making between marketing, production, pricing, finance, labor management, etc, it also extensively used in the hierarchical division of decision making and action taking. Tasks carrying in those horizontal and hierarchical divisions of labor constitute an organization. Task is the basic unit of individual learning and organizational learning. In the process of task carrying, an individual observes related facts of the task, assesses what happens, designs new organizing methods, implements new actions, and shares the knowledge and new design with those collaborated members (Kim, 1992). Because the organization is beneficiary of the knowledge, this learning is organizational.

Basic unit of organizational learning

In the reorganizing process in above Figure, the individual cognition or the groups shared mental model change does not equal to the increase of causal knowledge about the task. In cognitive researches, the engine of the adjustment actions lies in the imbalance between task performer's cognition and the stimulus he perceives. Learning is the process to eliminate the imbalance. Reality is constructed anew each time a learner acquires a new concept or structure. There are several methods to do so, such as imitation and trial and error. Imitations and trial and error indeed change the task performer's cognition state, but they do not necessarily increase his causal knowledge about the task. However, for the purpose of transferring experience, the researchers and practitioners' ultimate goal is to improve the knowledge of knowing why and knowing ...