The organizational learning in Malaysian companies

The aim of this paper is to study the companies learn in Malaysia. We used Organizational learning measurement instrument developed and tested by Dimovski (1994), Škerlavaj (2003), Dimovski and Škerlavaj (2005). It employs four measurement variables (Information acquisition, Information quality, Information interpretation, and Behavioral and cognitive changes) as well as 48 items (presented in the paper) to measure Organizational learning construct. In year 2005, data from 300 Malaysian companies were gathered. Results indicate that Malaysian companies have high mean in the way they perceive quality of information and their interpretation, as well as behavioral and cognitive changes. Today’s’ companies function in constantly changing and highly turbulent business environment. This a cause why there is a constant need for them to change and learn at individual, group, organizational as well as inter-organizational level (Sanchez, 2005). Organizational learning is considered to be one of the most promising concepts in modern managerial literature. According to deGeus (1988) ‘ability to learn faster than your competitors might be the only sustainable competitive advantage you have’. It has been established on base of investment banking industry in Ohio (Dimovski, 1994) and Slovenian companies with more than 100 employees in 2003 and 2004 (Škerlavaj, 2003; Dimovski and Škerlavaj, 2005) that better developed organizational learning contributes to improved organizational performance in financial as well as non-financial terms. In 2005, research was conducted in order to get an answer to the following research question: What is the companies learn in Malaysia? Organizational learning measurement instrument developed by Dimovski (1994), Škerlavaj (2003) and Dimovski and Škerlavaj (2005) was used in order to gather data from Malaysian companies on that matter