Selected Aspects of Human Resource Management Supporting and Limiting Organizational Learning

Abstract

In order to respond to success in a rapidly changeable world, many enterprises were adopting the rules and principles of a learning organization. The issues of learning organizations are wide and multidimensional. Generally, learning organizations focus on “learning” as a crucial component in their visions, goals, values, and all of their functions. There is an opinion that by collective learning, the organization’s members are able to improve the organizations performance and competitive advantages. It is especially important for SMEs, which should be under special attention because of their special influence on economic growth, unemployment reduction, market competitiveness, etc. For learning organization the priority is that the individual learning process needs to have a voluntary rather than compulsory character. The biggest challenge for managers/owners is increasing the willingness to learn and then share new knowledge with other members of the organization. Additionally, members of the learning organization should not only accept orders from their superiors, but they need to have courage and be encouraged to question established norms to explore new avenues of thinking and to make mistakes in order to improve their products/services and production methods. From this perspective, the crucial role for building learning processes in organization is the specifically shaped relationship between superiors and employees and effective human resource management. The main aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the relations supporting and limiting organizational learning. The empirical part of the paper was prepared on the basis of questionnaire survey in 2016 on a group of 250 micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises in Poland. During the elaboration of the paper, the generally accepted methods of economic research were used, including statistical analysis (gamma correlation coefficient) and graphical illustration methods.