Managing change and incorporating the learning organization culture in academe

This survey is based on few months of participant observation, informal exchanges, and formal interviews and explores higher education sector of Pakistan in the context of change management and Learning Organization (LO). Literature on change and learning shows that organizational learning takes place when employees and employers act as learning agents for the organization by timely responding to changes in the external and internal environments (Argyris and Schön, 1997). In other words, organizations with proactive approach towards change make "change management" an important ingredient of their culture and incorporate the learning organization principles in true spirit. Inspired with the phenomenon of "learning organization" presented by Senge (1990), James (2003), and Garvin et al., (2008), this preliminary exploratory study focuses particularly on the organizational learning and change, witnessed by higher education sector of Pakistan and sheds light on how the public sector, semi government and private sector universities have addressed this challenge. For this study primary data was collected using semi structured interviews supported by a questionnaire. However some data from secondary sources has also been used as additional sources of information. Results revealed that semi government and private sector faculty were on same page, as they have been found proactively addressing the issues of change and learning as compared to the public sector.