A SECTORAL AND REGIONAL BENCHMARKING STUDY WITH THE DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING ORGANIZATION QUESTIONNAIRE (DLOQ) SCALE MEASUREMENTS

Elektronik Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi® Electronic Journal of Social Sciences ® Ekim/October(2020) - Cilt/Volume:19 - Sayı/Issue:76 www.esosder.org ISSN:1304-0278 (1905-1915) A SECTORAL AND REGIONAL BENCHMARKING STUDY WITH THE DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING ORGANIZATION QUESTIONNAIRE (DLOQ) SCALE MEASUREMENTS ÖĞRENEN ÖRGÜT BOYUTLARI ANKETĠ (ÖÖBA) ÖLÇEĞĠ ĠLE SEKTÖREL VE BÖLGESEL BĠR KIYASLAMA ÇALIġMASI Tutku TUNCALI YAMAN 1 Abstract The aim of benchmarking studies is to enable the relevant sector professionals to identify gaps in the performance of the organization. Thus, they can provide a more objective perspective for them to gain a competitive advantage. The aim of this study is to collect the criterion values of the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) in terms of being a learning organization for the model of Watkins & Marsick (1993) which was created to measure the performance of organizations. In this context, in the last decade, academic articles with the keyword “DLOQ” were scanned. Finally, 40 articles were used to calculate the total comparison score. As a result, benchmarking figures were obtained on a sectoral and regional basis and an evaluation was made on a sample application. It is seem that European and Asian organizations show the best performance in terms of their benchmark figures, while the worst in the Middle East. On the other hand, Electronics & IT is by far the best performing sector. Keywords: Learning organization, The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) Öz Kıyaslama (Benchmarking) çalıĢmalarının amacı, ilgili sektör profesyonellerinin organizasyonlarının ilgili birimlerinin performansındaki boĢlukları tespit etmelerini sağlamaktır. Böylece, rekabet avantajı elde etmeleri için daha objektif bir bakıĢ açısı sağlayabilirler. Bu çalıĢmanın amacı, kuruluĢların öğrenen örgüt olma performansını sektörel ve bölgesel olarak değerlendirmek için Watkins & Marsick (1993) tarafından geliĢtirilen Öğrenen Örgüt Boyutları Anketi (ÖÖBA) (Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire:DLOQ) ölçümlerini ele alarak kıyaslama değerleri oluĢturmaktır. Bu bağlamda, son on yılda, “DLOQ” anahtar kelimesine sahip akademik makaleler taranmıĢ, toplam karĢılaĢtırma puanını hesaplamak için 40 makale kullanılmıĢtır. Sonuç olarak sektörel ve bölgesel bazda kıyaslama rakamları elde edilerek örnek bir uygulama üzerinde bir değerlendirme yapılmıĢtır. Elde edilen kıyaslama değerlerine bakıldığında Avrupa ve Asya’daki kurumlar en iyiler iken, Orta Doğu’dakiler en kötü performansı göstermektedir. Diğer taraftan Elektronik ve BT sektörü açık ara en baĢarılı sektör olarak karĢımıza çıkmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Öğrenen organizasyon, Kıyaslama, ÖÖBA, DLOQ 1 Dr., Beykent Üniversitesi Ġktisadi ve Ġdari Bilimler Fakültesi Yönetim BiliĢim Sistemleri Bölümü, , Orcid:0000-0001-8742-2625 Makale Türü: Araştırma Makalesi – Geliş Tarihi :01/07/20192019 – Kabul Tarihi:04/07/2020 DOI:10.17755/esosder.585168 Atıf için: Elektronik Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 2020; 19(76):1905-1915 Ekim/October(2020) – Cilt/Volume:19 – Sayı/Issue:76 (1905-1915) 1. Introduction The first decade of the 21st century brought rapid changes in global, environmental, and technological habitat of business organizations and compelled them to adapt fast. As a living organism, nowadays, each business needs to maintain a competitive and flexible composition to gather sustainable growth. In order to reach that goal internally, establishing a learning organizational culture is a well – known human resources management tool (Marquardt, 2002). Concerning having a measurable parameter related to this effort, Watkins & Marsick (1993) have developed a learning organization model, which is using the defined Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ). The first practice of the scale was realized by Watkins & Marsick (1997) and the adaptation of different languages process begun in 2003 (Watkins & Marsick, 2003). Although the scale in question was used for individual evaluation in many studies since that date, it is not possible to comment on what the results obtained mean when compared to the sector or region examples. In order to make a comparison in this way, both companies and academicians need reliable benchmark figures. If the results of the research are not evaluated within the context of benchmarking, evaluations made based only on the scale results cannot be objective and may leed sector professionals to wrong decisions. Considering the state-of-art usage of DLOQ results, one can realize that it is not sufficient for accurate evaluations. Thus, it seems significant to develop reliable benchmark information that relies on significant academic researches. Since it is seen in the literature that any type of benchmark study has not been published before, the main aim of this study determined to generate an objective benchmark, based on academic researches that were realized on a global scale in the last decade. In accordance with the objective of the study, firstly a piece of brief information about “Learning Organizations” and its main measurement tool, “The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire”, which has been used by both scholars and practitioners, will be given in the following sections. In the fourth section, the methodology and results of the study will be detailed. In that section, studies that were used in the benchmarking study will also be discussed and final benchmark figures will be given. In conclusion, the final evaluation of the study will be done with suggestions for future research. 2. What is a Learning Organization? All business actors try to find an innovative way to improve their performance in terms of competitiveness. Being one step ahead to competitors is crucial but some improvement programs could fail than succeed. According to Garvin (1993), there are five ways for organizations to respond to new challenges:  Solving problems systematically,  Experimenting new approaches to work,  Learning from past experience,  Learning from other companies and customers, and  Transferring knowledge throughout your organization. These factors are also a shorter way of mastering a learning organization. As a short description, a learning organization is an institution, which is able to develop its capabilities on a continuous basis for long-term benefits (Senge, 1990). The contribution and roles of employees are very effective in the existence of learning organizations. According to Marquardt (2002), the building blocks that form the learning organization system, organization, people, information, and technology are interrelated and necessary for the organization. When one of these elements is weaker than the other, it will affect the 1906 Ekim/October(2020) – Cilt/Volume:19 – Sayı/Issue:76 (1905-1915) relationship. Learning is the center of learning organizations. According to Martin Marquardt's (2002) model, (...truncated)