Organizations’ IQ!

The knowledge is considered one of the most important assets that people and organizations can gain nowadays, because it gives security, a great level to adaptability to change, and an overall vision of the situations. Information is a useful resource that companies have to obtain in order to be able to survive in the business world, and learning is a process in which companies can acquire it.

In the literature have been developed several analysis about how people learns and how they use that acquired knowledge. The Classical Conditioning is a typical procedure that involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance, the "unconditioned stimulus"; and the Operant Conditioning is a form of psychological learning where an individual modifies the occurrence and form of its own behavior due to the association of the behavior with a stimulus. These theories exampled the way how learning is seen in the academic field. Thus, Bandura (1977) states: "Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action”.

From this academic point of view, now, the knowledge and the know-how is seen as a fundamental asset that companies have to achieve, because it is unique and difficult to imitate, which is an important characteristic in a world where people get closer and information easy available. Consequently, organizations have to be able to take advantage from the eventual changes that occur in the world affecting the customers’ preferences, the workforce’s thoughts and the competitive approaches, and the solution is collecting valuable information, learning how to apply it (know-how), creating a high level of adaptability to change, finally, obtaining an important competitive advantage.

Learning Organizations are described as an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.