Globalisation has elevated knowledge to become the prime source of competitive advantage. Because knowledge is derived from learning, management concepts such as the Learning Organisation (LO) started to gain popularity in the early 1990s. However, attention in the LO concept has declined since the mid-1990s. At the same time, there is a lack of relevant literature to guide practitioners in manufacturing organisations such as those in Malaysia which need to become LOs but do not know how to do so in their transition into the knowledge-based economy. Hence, three separate but interlinked papers on the application of LO concept were written as a contribution to revive interest and to assist practitioners on LO implementation. To show how Papers 1, 2 and 3 relate to each other, they have been integrated into this paper as the literature review, the first empirical study and the second empirical study respectively. / The literature review looked at the causes of the reduced interest in the LO concept and suggested some empirical research opportunities to revive it. Consequently, two empirical studies were conducted based on a common theoretical grounding and sample. The first study addressed the role of organisation size on the LO implementation by analysing the extent of presence of LO characteristics between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises (LEs) in the Malaysian electrical and electronic (E & E) industry. Because the industry is dominated by foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs), this research also looked at the role of ownership by doing a similar analysis between foreign-owned enterprises and Malaysian-owned enterprises. From the findings, it was concluded that organisation size and ownership do not cause any significant perceived difference among organisations in their practice of LO characteristics. The second study tackled the perceived lack of usefulness of the LO by testing for a correlation between the LO characteristics and organisational performance and for significant difference in organisational performance between LOs and non-LOs. The findings confirmed that LO characteristics correlate positively with organisational performance, resulting in LOs achieving significantly better organisational performance compared to non-LOs. / Thesis DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267485 |
| Creators | Yeoh, Oon Tean |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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