Facilitator: The Lubricant and Catalyst for Organizational Learning

Nowadays, increasing number of Chinese manufacturing enterprises are putting resources into brand building, original R&D, process and quality improvements etc. to cope with increasing global competition in the post WTO entry era. More attentions have also been paid to the improvement of their organizational capabilities to keep pace with the rapid advances in technology and changes of the international market condition. In the last few years, SAE Magnetics has persisted with its adoption of the OL vehicle, Project Action Learning of Law and Chuah (2004) to improve its performance and sustain its competitiveness. Learning facilitation is one of the supporting pillars of PAL implementation. When the effectiveness of OL process is hampered by some unprecedented events and organizational changes, the need for better OL facilitation becomes greater and more urgent. This paper first delineates some OL implementation problems encountered by SAE Magnetics in its OL journey. Based on the integration of literature findings and field study results, a practical PAL facilitation model is expounded. The implementation issues of this PAL facilitation model are discussed.