A STUDY FOR DEVELOPING A MEASURING INSTRUMENT OF “ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING”

Organizational Learning started to develop as an area of interest and as a subject of study since sixties. The concept is concerned with a type of knowledge which the organisational members gather by their day to day interaction with external and internal environment of the organisation, and using the knowledge for permanent change and development of the strategy, process , culture etc. which are continued in the organisation as a semi-permanent process. When such permanent changes occur, it is assumed that the organization “learns”. A lot of research works were undertaken on this subject since its inception but most of them are conceptual or prescriptive in nature. The reason for shortage of empirical studies may be the absence of a suitable instrument for measuring the construct. In this article following a literature survey of the existing literature, including the existing quantitative instruments for measuring OL, a new quantitative instrument for measuring OL is developed. Initially following the survey, a 37-item questionnaire was developed which was modified to a 34 item instrument on the basis of based on feedback from experts opinion and pilot study. Ultimately, item-wise responses were obtained on a Likert scale from 134 managers of Port and Shipping Organizations in India and that was analyzed by exploratory factor analysis. Eventually, the study developed a 27-item questionnaire with 4 dimensions named as “Internal capability”, “Organizational Memory”, “Spontaneous learning” and “External Knowledge”.