Organisational learning in an Australian food industry chain

Abstract

This paper reports on a longitudinal study that focused on examining the transformational change process undertaken within a major Australian food manufacturing company. Organisational learning is an essential prerequisite for any successful change process and an organisation's ability to learn is dependent on the existence of an environment within the organisation that nurtures learning and the presence of key enablers that facilitate the learning process. An organisation's capacity to learn can be enhanced through its ability to form and sustain collaborative relationships with its chain partners. The results of this study confirm that the process of organisational change is difficult to achieve, takes time, requires dedicated resources and occurs at a differential rate throughout an organisation. The results also demonstrated that the change process had a positive impact on the organisation's ability to build and sustain relationships with its main supply chain partners. The fact that the majority of these relationships remained focused on improving operational alignment and cost reduction indicated that collaborative chain relationships are difficult to establish.