Abstract:

Dynamic and complex business conditions have requested from contemporary organizations to invest in their intellectual capital, or to continually obtain, generate and transfer new knowledge. In the world of change, in which changes have become the only constant while everything else remains inconstant and unpredictable, the knowledge has become the superior resource. Therefore, it is said that long-life learning has become requirement and necessity for every successful individual and company. The importance of improvement and acquiring new knowledge is stipulated by the fact that knowledge has become key and available resource and capital, but also provides conditions for gaining the competitive advantage on the market for every organization. However, many organizations are becoming vulnerable because of non-flexibility, lack of information, ignorance, non-standardized inputs, processes and outputs.
Organization of the future must be proactive and based on the double loop learning, which means that it accepts the concept of organizational learning and the model of learning organization, based upon such concept. Learning organization is applied learning concept of a particular organization, or that is organization that “learns as it is learned”.
This paper relies upon several theoretical positions: that all organizations are learning, regardless the traditional model of their organizational structure, that teams are requirement and mandatory in the new structuring and designing of learning organization or in organization where knowledge dominates; that teams are representing the most important organizational units where learning process is supported and applied and, therefore, it is necessary to define, develop and promote such models of behavior and also to create such techniques of team learning which will transfer knowledge and learning in the most efficient manner, which implies that all organizations are more or less capable to apply the concept of learning organization.
The aim of this research is to investigate whether all organizations which have their structures upgraded with teams as the most superior forms of organization, have a potential to learn, and how applying the different types, forms and learning activities within teams contribute to the development of learning organization. For testing of these goals, using the case study method, a questionnaire of the Likert 5-level scale was created for testing the opinion of members of nine teams (N=79) in one of the complex bureaucratic organization in Serbia.Using this method, the research is to examine standpoints and opinions of the team members, regarding the processes and activities applied in team learning.
The results are stipulating that organizations are learning, regardless of their traditional model of structuring, and that model of learning organization does not have to be specialized model of the organizational design, but its characteristics may be implemented within the existing model of organizational structure that has a tendency to develop into the learning organization. Also, the same forms and activities of team learning and transfer of knowledge, ideas and information, as the most important processes in development of learning organization, have been applied inside the questioned teams, in spite of differences in manufacturing processes that are used.

Keywords:

Knowledge, organizational structure, learning organization, teams and activities of team learning.