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African American Managers Experiences in Companies Identified as “Learning Organizations”
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Bristol, Trammell L. |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | This paper summarizes the results of a qualitative study where the purpose was to explore how the learning organization impacted African American managers. Based on these findings, practice and future research for HRD and adult education is suggested. Since 1990, and the publication of Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, there had been much discussion in the HRD and adult education literature on the learning organization (LO). Senge conceptualized the LO as an organization that emphasizes continuous learning in order to make the organization more effective, along with the five disciplines of personal mastery, systems thinking, team learning, uncovering mental models and shared vision. In the past 10 years, there’s been much research on the LO, and the findings of these studies fall into three primary themes. The major themes include: the role of management in the LO (Coad & Berry, 1998; Ellinger, 1997; Ellinger, et al, 1999; Hodgkinson, 2000; Johnson, 2002) the performance of LO (Benabou, 1999; Ellinger, et al, 2000; Simonin, 1997; Terziovski, et al., 2000; Voss et al., 1997), and how to effectively implement the LO (Albert, 1998; Barker & Camarata, 1998; Bell et al, 2002; Bierema & Berdish, 1999; Elkjaer, 2001; Griego et al, 2000; Thomsen & Hoest, 2001). In critiquing the research based literature, Howell, Schied, & Carter (2001) observe that while Senge and those who rely on his work, do focus on learning and productivity in the organization, they tend to focus on instrumental learning. Further, both Dirkx (1999) and Mojab and Gorman (2003) highlight that there is limited research on how sociocultural and political contextual factors intermingle within the LO. Further, Bierema (1998) concluded that the experiences of ethnic and gender minority groups, in the research, are ignored yet these issues “have the most impact on organizational dynamics” (¶16). There has been little research on how race affects learning in the so-called LOs. There has been some discussion, however, about diversity in the workplace (Cox & Nkomo, 1990; Gregory, 1999) but thus far this has remained separate from discussions about the LO. The literature does highlight the fact that there are differences between the career development of African Americans which has not been represented in the mainstream career development literature. In particular, there is a lack of mentoring relationships for African Americans and this affects their ability to climb the corporate ladder and gain the knowledge about the power relations and the culture of the organization (Barrett, Cervero & Bailey, 2003; Corsun & Costen, 2001; Palmer, 2002). Furthermore, while much of the LO literature focuses on the experiences of managers, there is a dearth of literature on African American managers (Collins 1989, 1997). As a result of the lack of research on race and the LO, the primary purpose of this research was to explore the experiences of African American managers within so called “learning organizations.” |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2735&context=aerc |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2735&context=aerc&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
