Organizational Learning and Continuous Improvement Among Cereal Milling Firms in Kenya

Abstract

This study sought to ascertain what organizational learning mechanisms cereal millings firms in Kenya use to achieve their learning, the challenges in implementing these organizational learning mechanisms, and whether the relationship between organizational learning and continuous improvement holds in this industry. Survey research design was used on the population of 102 milling firms. Data was collected using both electronic and self-administered questionnaires. The findings indicated that performance management systems and regular meetings are the most preferred organizational learning mechanisms at frequencies of 71% and 58.1% respectively. Quality circles and experimentation are not commonly used, and were reported by 9.7% and 6.5% of the respondents respectively. The findings also showed that 4 out of the 7 constructs of organizational learning had a significant relationship with the collective variables used to measure continuous improvement. Several challenges that cereal millers encounter in the implementation of organizational learning mechanisms were reported. These include lack of proper infrastructure to support learning activities, ineffective employee reward schemes to reward new innovative ideas and lack of continuity in the learning process. The researcher recommends that cereal millers should adopt other organizational learning mechanisms such as quality circles that enhance organizational learning from a quality perspective. Cereal milling firms should also seek ways to acquire and appropriately deploy the necessary infrastructure to aid their learning needs. This can be achieved through collaboration with continuous improvement professionals.