Research Proposal on An Investigation on Learning Organizations Practice in Pakistan

An Investigation on Learning Organizations Practice in Pakistan     1.0  Background of the Study The concept of learning organization is becoming an increasingly widespread philosophy in modern business conduct. The focus of learning organization is enhancing its systems including the people individually and collectively for the purpose of continuous enrichment of organization's capacity for performance. According to Peter Senge (1990), learning organizations refer to the "organizations where people continu7ally expand their capacity to create the results they desire; where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning to see the whole together".             Senge, further, argued that for organizations to be more flexible, adaptive and productive, the necessity to discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels shall materialize. Certain basic disciplines or 'component technologies' is the dimension that distinguishes learning organizations. These are said to be converging to innovative learning organizations as systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision and team learning.             The rationale behind this research is that the success of learning organization concept depends on the extent of its implementation within the organization, and that there is the difficulty of identifying real-life examples. In Pakistani organizational setting, though there are specific factors that could likely to affect the implementation of such including culture and economic arrangements, the may be real-life situations that could contribute to learning organization research and literature, which may also strengthen the teachings of learning organizations thinkers. 2.0  Statement of the Problem The problem that will be addressed in this research concerns the recent trend in learning organizations in Pakistan and its relative growth in the country. The following research questions will be answered.    1)     What are the activities that learning organizations in Pakistan implement? 2)     What are the main challenges the implementation of learning organizations are facing? 3)     What are the benefits and drawbacks of embracing the disciplines of learning organization? 4)     To what extent the learning organization components are active in Pakistan? 5)     How important are individual and collective learning for Pakistani organizations? 6)     Why Pakistani organisations chose to adopt and implement the concept of learning organization? 7)     How being a learning organization contributes to acquiring competitive advantages and innovation? 8)     How the Pakistani government supports the learning organization philosophy? 3.0  Objectives of the Study The aim of the study is to analyse the recent trend in and the growth of learning organization in Pakistan. The following specific objectives will be addressed. 1)                            To identify the rationale behind the implementation of learning organization concept 2)                            To determine how Pakistani organizations adopt and implement the principles and fundamentals of learning organization 3)                             To distinguish the benefits, downsides and challenges of implementing learning organization concept 4)                            To analyze how being learning organization contribute to the competitive edge of Pakistani organizations  5)                            To evaluate the importance of learning organization to Pakistani organizations based on the extent of the implementation of learning organizations components 4.0  Research Methodology   The study will explore the problem in an interpretivist view, using exploratory research strategy because it aims to determine the present facts as well as facts that are not yet explored about the phenomenon. Exploratory research will enable the study to look at the problem in both descriptive and exploratory manner. It will look into the problem by exploring the views of different sets of respondents, as well as by exploring different literatures related with the study. This study will also employ qualitative research method because it will try to find and build theories that will explain the relationship of one variable with another variable through qualitative elements in research. Through this method, qualitative elements that do not have standard measures such as behavior, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs within the business domain will be analyzed. This qualitative study will conduct primary and secondary research. The primary source of data will come from the researcher-made questionnaire and interview questions. The primary data frequently gives the detailed definitions of terms and statistical units used in the study. These are usually broken down into finer classifications. The secondary sources of data will come from published articles, books, business journals, theses and related studies and the Internet on learning organizations. Acquiring secondary data are more convenient to use because they are already condensed and organized. Moreover, analysis and interpretation are done more easily.