Adapting to the Changing Environment

Contingency theory seeks to explain the influences of internal and external constraints in organizations and the nature of the environment in which they operate, whether they operate in a stable or rapidly changing environment. The digital age has no doubt changed the library from a stable organization to an organic organization and the learning organization theory explains how it has managed to survive and succeed. Garvin (1993) defined a learning organization as an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insight. A learning organization facilitates innovations and learning for all its members and thereby continuously transforms itself. The transformation enables organizations to search for new ideas, new problems and new opportunity for learning from which competitive advantage can be culled in an increasingly competitive world (Rowley, 1997)

The driving forces for any organization are the individuals in it, as Senge stated in Hatch (1998), “the organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all level in an organization”. Andretti (1997) in agreement with Senge, also noted that “commitment and responsibility for continuous learning activity rest on the shoulders of nearly all library employees”. In this dynamic information age, the information professional must make deliberate effort to constantly learn and retool to be an essential ingredient in the learning organization. Retooling is essential in the evaluation of existing procedures for the purpose of improving them or in the design of new endeavors. The Library administration is responsible for setting the stage, provide leadership and making the necessary resources available for the learning organization. The management must strive to provide a learning organization which Pedler (1988) identify as, one which:

1. has a climate in which individual members are encouraged to learn and to develop their full potentials;


2. extends this learning culture to include customers, suppliers and other significant stakeholders;


3. makes human resource development strategy central to business policy;


4. is in a continuous process of organizational transformation.

Reference
Andretti M.(1997). A Commitment to Making the library a learning organization. College and Research Libraries Vol. 58(4)
Garvin D.A.(1993). Building a learning organization. Harvard Business review 71.
Hatch M.J. (1997). Organization Theory; Modern symbolic and post modern
perspectives. Oxford university press Inc. New York
Pedler, M. Boydell, T and Burgoyne, J (1988), Learning Company Project, Training Agency, Sheffield.

- Gbaje E.S