Session 6 by Ricky

Identify a story in your organisation that helps explain issues that need to be addressed. Share your story with colleague, select one story from your group to share with the class. Upload into your group blog, a story about your organisation that helps explain issues that need to be addressed.

I would like to share a story that happened in my summer internship experience in Cathay Pacific Airways in the year 2010. My main duty is to learn the ground operation and customer assistance service.

After recovering from the financial crisis in the late 2008, the company was enlarging its airline destinations. However, when I came to the internship, I noticed that the company modified its paying and welfare system, and put a cost control through a few factors: the in-fight service and catering; employees’ medical and transportation allowance; besides, the employees' wages paying system was changed, from a daily-based pay to an hour-based pay. The result for the employees, especially for the cabin crews have to fly more to earn a satisfying wage level.

Some of the colleges felt unhappy and unfair, because the company has overcome its difficulty of financial problem two years ago and now becomes one of the biggest and profitable airline companies. However, it seems that the employees need to work more. After the deduction of the welfare and allowance, they can take few times of taxi to the airport. But some friends working in this company told me that it is not the first time the company cuts cost, so they seem to endure it. After all, Cathay Pacific is still one of the highest pay and welfare airline companies of the world.

The thing I learned is that working in a big and famous company does not mean that things will be easier. On the contrary, we should try to work hard to at least keep the present thing that we could have. Besides, as a new starter especially graduates, having a chance of working in a big company like CPA or HSBC is good, but do not focus too much on wage or welfare. A famous company never fears of losing employees, because there is always a long queue of people waiting for a position in the company. Instead, we should try to think what we can do, and what we can learn, at the time when we are working in the company, because, as a new staff works in a basic position, we do not have much bargaining power.

Reference:

"Cathay Pacific Airways Pilots Salary",

http://www.askcaptainlim.com/salary-propilot-78/294-cathay-pacific-airways.html

"Cathay Pacific Launches a Major Cost Cut",

http://www.businesstraveller.com/asia-pacific/news/cathay-pacific-to-launch-major-cost-cutting-mea

Session 5 by Makino

Review group workplace case: compare similarities and differences and develop a table evidencing this.

According to the questionnaire that have done about our organizations, we get 12 items of learning organization scores summary, supportive learning environment and concrete learning process and practice. Then we put the different item scores into the tables of each person. From the tables we can analysis the similarities and differences of our group workplace more easily.

Concrete Learning Process and practice

	Experimentation	Information Collection	Analysis	Education and training	Information Transfer
HKUGA	50	61	66	45	57
University	50	59	77	79	63
Power Supply	54	64	60	95	70

  For the first table, we can see that Vanice's organization does well in the "Concrete learning process and practice". Her organization is the company in HK and contains not only in library level but also in company level. I think "Concrete learning process and practice" may almost depends on the scale and properties of the organization. My organization is the university in mainland China and pay less attention to the "information collection" and "Experimentation". Jack's organization is a community in HKU organized by students. So Vanice's organization may have more resources and funds supportive than Jack's and mine. 

Supportive Learning Environment

	Psychological safety	Appreciation of difference	Openness to new ideas	Time For reflection
HKUGA	86	57	71	51
University	69	50	68	51
Power Supply	60	39	54	29

The second table is about the leadership of the organization. Good leaders coach every member to achieve self-mastery, to actively look for ways to improve the organization, to take accountability for making changes, to help other members learn. Good leaders encourage experimentation, open discussion of directions needed, ideas and possibilities. The data of Jack shows that his organization has a good leadership. He told the leaders not only can always make the good decision to lead the organization but also can become learners and giving up the traditional view of driving from top. In my organization ( the university in mainland), leaders can make good decision in many times and is willing to improve the learning organization. But the leadership is lack of learning from the members such  teachers and students. Besides other factors may also have influence that my organization cannot get a that good supportive learning environment. I'm not so sure about the reasons that cause the scores of Vanice's organization's supportive learning environment. As it is near mine, I think her organization may meet the same problem as mine.

Learning Organization Scores Summary

	Leadership that reinforces learning	Learning process	Learning environment
HKUGA	83	55	66
University	65	65	59
Power Supply	80	68	45

From the last table, we can see that the scores of Jack's and Vanice's organization are almost higher than mine. I think the macro environment that we learned from class can help to explain the differences. The macro environment is the major external and uncontrollable factors that influence an organization's decision making , and affect its performance and strategies. These factors include the economic factors;demographics;legal, political, and social conditions; technological changes; and natural forces. It include competitors, changes in interest rates, changes in cultural tastes, disastrous weather,or government regulations. I think my organization pay more attention to "utilitarian' point such as the students exam results. While Jack's and Vanice's organizations can keep the good balance in learning organization.

  This is a video from youtube about Macro and Micro environment. I think it can help us to get more information about the Macro environment that I mentioned before.


References

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/macro-environment.html

http://www.parexcellencemagazine.com/resources-and-advice/leaders-role-in-a-learning-organization.html

Session 5 Comparison Result

This is comparison result of one piece 2 members: Ricky, Milky and Cissy.
Ricky’s target organization is Prudential Hong Kong Ltd while Milky’s organization is her university. And Cissy choose the Global IELTS Hangzhou branch as target organization. See from three tables, Ricky and Milky seem to get the same result. I’ll analyzes the similarities and differences below. 

Concrete Learning Processes and Practices
	Experimentation	Information collection	Analysis	Education and training	Information transfer
Ricky	46	75	51	86	50
Milky	46	75	51	86	50
Cissy	64	68	49	81	66

The first table displays the “concrete learning processes and practices” in these three organizations. The organizations which Milky and Ricky choose get a lower score than Cissy in the respect of experimentation, which means Cissy’s organization are more easily to try new things and new methods. And Cissy’s organization takes an advantage in information collection and transfer. When it comes to analysis, the organization Cissy joins in is weak. All originations attach importance to education and training.

Supportive Learn Environment
	Psychological safety	Appreciation of differences	Openness to new ideas	Time to reflection
Ricky	63	50	50	60
Milky	63	50	50	60
Cissy	63	50	50	60

The second form mainly focused on supportive learning environment. We three have same score in above four aspects. The three organizations appreciate new ideas and accept differences to some extent. What’s more, our organizations give reflection to new and different things in a short time.

Learning Organization Scores Summary
	Leadership that reinforces learning (composite)	Learning process composite	Learning environment composite
Ricky	58	61	55
Milky	58	61	55
Cissy	60	65	55

The last table is a summary of Learning organization scores. Cissy’s organization has a higher score in learning process composite, and the leadership that reinforces learning. Maybe the reason is that GLOBAL IELTS is a training institute. As to learning environment, the score of three organizations rank in the low class.

In a conclusion, these three organization need to do more efforts in becoming a learning organization.

Session 5 by Vanice

In this week, we have use the learning in organization survey to evaluate an organization of our own choice in class. Here is a video about an interview with the Learning in Organizations Survey developers which covers the following ideas:

What is a learning organization?

A learning organization must have three factors, emphasize learning processes, learning environment make the processes possible and leadership which inspire the learning processes

Why it is important for organization to promote learning?

Service, product and process can be copy but what people knows cannot, so knowledge becomes a valuable asset for company and company can stay ahead of their competitor if they keep learning.

Factors which contributing to an effective learning organization?

·        Manager need to support their subordinates in learning especially the keys of psychological safety such as encourage people to ask questions and making mistakes are acceptable.

·        Company must have a culture in sharing ideas and expectations.

·        Company must generate ideas and response to change.

The video is short but covers many of the key concepts in promoting organization learning and would be a good reference for company management. Especially the learning in organization survey provide a easy and fast way for managers to evaluate their own company learning situation which help them stay competitive with others.

Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUP4WcfNyA

Session 5 Comparison Result

Concrete Learning Process and practice

	Experimentation	Information Collection	Analysis	Education and training	Information Transfer
HKUGA	50	61	66	45	57
University	50	59	77	79	63
Power Supply	54	64	60	95	70

Supportive Learning Environment

	Psychological safety	Appreciation of difference	Openness to new ideas	Time For reflection
HKUGA	86	57	71	51
University	69	50	68	51
Power Supply	60	39	54	29

Learning Organization Scores Summary

	Leadership that reinforces learning	Learning process	Learning environment
HKUGA	83	55	66
University	65	65	59
Power Supply	80	68	45

I had put all the organization's mark into these table so that I can have an easy comparison 

between these result. First of all, under of "Concrete Learning Process and practice", we can realize that these three organizations have roughly same performance within the following three parts ---experimentation, information collection and analysis. For the information transfer, they still have a roughly similar performance in this field. But, for the education and training, we found that Power Supply has the best performance among these three while the University is the second one and the HKUGA is having the least performance. From this result, we can know that Power Supply is a place for the employee to receive an excellent training and development and HKUGA is just a organization that force the employees to work  in a "straight-forward" manner. 

For the Supportive Learning Environment, we can see that HKUGA has the best performance in all four aspects while the Power Supply has the least performance indeed. And of course, University's performance is in between them. What is the reasons cause such pattern? It is because  HKUGA is a organization consists of plenty of employees that come from HKU. They work for HKUGA for internship. HKUGA has a great expectation on the internship helpers. Thus, they will not provide any training for them, but, they are pleased to see the students keeping flowing new ideas and bring new breakthrough in the project. Therefore, it is absolutely a good place for supportive learning environment. They encourage their initiative in completing task. 

For the Power Supply, on the other hand, is opposite to that of HKUGA. The main reason is that all the task inside the Power Supply are almost the same everyday. They have a fixed regulations and guideline. To ensure the safety, all the regulations should be strictly followed. Thus, they have to do the same things everyday without too many variety. 

For the last session, Learning Organization Scores Summary, as mentioned before, HKUGA is a good place to learn since it needs inter-flow with the others. Therefore, it gets the highest mark in the learning environment while Power Supply get the lowest score   as it only requires the same job duties everyday. Beside, HKUGA is also the best place that leadership can reinforce learning. As it is always require the student in completing a task by generating a new concept, idea or even technology. Thus, a good leader is crucial. Although Power Supply is an organization that require the same daily job duties. It's still better to have a leader. In case of any problems, a leader should handle and "shoulder" all the responsibilities indeed.