INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE FROM THE EMPLOYEE PERSPECTIVE: THE CASE OF SLOVENIA

Organizational learning is considered to be one of the most important issues in modern managerial literature. Recently, it has been coupled with the question of organizational performance. The Stakeholder theory addresses organizational performance evaluation from multiple perspectives - shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers of a certain company. This paper focuses on the relationship between organizational learning process (Ol) and organizational performance from the employee perspective (Empp). We tested the hypothesis that higher-level organizational learning leads to improved organizational performance from the employee perspective. We used the sample data gathered by a self-administered questionnaire from top management members of 197 Slovenian companies with more that 100 employees in June 2004. Two constructs (Ol and Empp) were measured using nine measurement variables. Structural equation modelling methodology was employed. The results demonstrate the statistically significant, strong and positive impact of organizational learning on performance from the employee perspective. Companies which invest efforts into the systematic approach to organizational learning profit in terms of an augmented level of employee trust in the leadership, improved efficiency of work organization, a more committed workforce, decreased costs of work per employee, increased employee satisfaction and increased employee flexibility