Learning Barriers In NGOs
Identification A Must

By Shankar P. Rajbhandari

TO gain popularity to be a learning organisation is increasing day by day in all sectors- public, private, and non-government. Although, they are largely tempted to transform into learning organisations, the task has not become that easy due to the prevalence of learning barriers that largely exist in most of the organisations. The problems of learning barriers in NGO sector are equally acute as in other sectors.

Reason

An NGO cannot be a learning organisation unless it gets victory over identifying the learning barriers and understanding the correct approach to curb them. Most of the NGOs admit that their practice does not always match up to their aspiration. One major reason is that NGOs, like other organisations, have to overcome carefully their organisational learning barriers.

The first step towards addressing barriers to learning is to identify what they are. Once an NGO becomes able to identify the real cause of learning barrier(s), it will be half way through towards eliminating the learning barriers in the organisation. Problem identification is therefore the most difficult part in the process of treating the learning barriers in an organisation. Nevertheless, in the process of understanding the learning barriers of NGOs, they can be categorised as – internal and external.

The internal learning barriers of NGOs prevail in many forms. Some are explicit and others are implicit. Both are equally detrimental for an organisation’s growth. There are a number of critical internal learning barriers of NGOs.

First, the staff of many NGOs will readily acknowledge (with varying degree of frustration) that their organisation has characteristics, which make the process of organisational learning difficult. Also, the identification of learning difficulty is one of the crucial parts in the process of avoiding learning barriers in NGOs. Notably, learning difficulties are often expressed in terms of structure, value learning, lack of adequate resources into learning, blame culture, and others. From this perspective, the internal learning barriers of NGOs are equally critical as external learning barriers, which affect invariably in organisational growth. It is also widely recognised that learning in NGOs is very difficult because the characteristics and behaviours of NGOs often do not become favourable to the requirements of learninig.

The attitude or behaviour pattern of organisation leader is also one of the crucial factors regarding the internal learning barriers of the organisation. The behaviur pattern of leaders whether that fits in the organisation or not is the decisive factor that largely depends upon the favourable or unfavourable situation of the organisation. Thus, Alan Fowler, an expert in the area of civil society reforms opines that learning has much to do with the attitudes of leaders or managers, their degree of personal security and an understanding of how they can be most effective.

Many NGOs conceive the culture as one of the barriers of learning. Differences in learning styles and languages are an inevitable feature of a large, dispersed, multi-cultural staff. Similarly, organisational structure also may cause barrier to learning if it is not compatible to the work culture and nature of job. Hierarchical, centralised, control-oriented structures are generally the learning barrier in any organisation. This is because, different parts of the organisation may guard information jealously rather than exchange it freely.

Weak incentives or rewards for learning can also consider as internal barrier to the organisational learning. Hence, failures are disguised or punished, inertia, defensiveness, complacency and territoriality may override NGO values of openness. ‘Risk aversion’ is commonplace and job insecurity and short-term contracts make staff less amenable to learning. All these ill practices in an organisation act as learning barriers.

Underdeveloped systems for accessing, storing, transferring, and disseminating learning can be considered as learning barrier. Information overload is common. Information that is systematised into knowledge-in-action becomes supportive for organisational development. Similarly, too much information or information overloaded also becomes learning barrier. A huge amount of information around, but too little of a structure does not ensure that the right people get what they need at the right time.

Weak in dealing with ‘discordant information’ or controversial information also may cause learning barrier to the organisation. Because, learning which challenges the organisational consensus or threatens short-term institutional interests, particularly about role and responsibilities, If it is wedded to an operational role in an organisation it becomes detrimental. NGOs however, are never immune to the learning disabilities that plague the bureaucracy.

Apart from the internal barriers to learning, there are a number of other powerful forces which may block the learning process and which operate at an interpersonal or even psychological level. In this regard, Chris Argyris and David Schon advocate that defensive routines are the entrenched habits that we use to protect ourselves from the embarrassment and threat that come from exposing our thinking to others. Defensive routines therefore, are one of the psychological barriers to leaning in NGOs.

Also there are many external learning barriers that NGOs have not only to be aware of but also to be dealt with. Basically, external barriers to learning are those which arise from the organisation’s external environment and over which the NGOs may have little or no influence to control alone.

As the task of identifying external learning barriers is critical, it is widely accepted that a useful starting point for identifying external barriers to learning is to look at the NGOs key stakeholders. The NGOs stakeholders are mainly as its service recipients, donors, other NGOs, INGOs, general public, government, supporters, and others. The identification of the stockholders and the relationships with them are very important concerns that help to eliminate the external learning barriers in the NGOs.

Virtually, the nature of donor priorities often enforces on NGOs a fragmented project framework, which can inhibit learning or even make it almost impossible. Also, the pressure to demonstrate low overheads to donors may make NGOs reluctant to invest the time and other resources necessary for effective organisational learning.

As far as the donor pressure to NGOs is concerned, competition for funding with other organisations may create a perceived pressure to generate uncomplicated success stories for the public and even some of the organisations supporters. Amongst many ill practices, rising competition for funds is also the one that prevails as the learning barrier in NGOs. Because, such a competition leads NGOs to prioritise public relations over genuine learning.

Self-Criticism

Anyway, in order to escape from all the above internal and external learning barriers in organisation, self-criticism and analysis are highly required. For this, NGOs are to be serious about learning.

Introducing E-Governance

GOVERNMENT should choose E-Governance or electronic governance to deliver government services and information to the public using electronic means. Use of IT in government facilitates an efficient, speedy and transparent process for disseminating information to the public and other agencies, and for performing government administration services.

To achieve this task , we should create exclusive club of states, capital, districts and villages embracing IT in administration. Members of the club should be literate people with the attitude of participating in government activities. They should have a patriotic thinking. People should make themselves aware of current happenings within and outside the country.

Impact

The greatest impact of e-governance will undoubtedly be in the rural sectors where majority of our citizens reside. But the question arises regarding the value of IT for rural development. It is a moral dilemma for the decision maker and multilateral funding institutions, whether to utilise the limited sources for rural development for the development of IT or to use it for other basic needs such as hospitals, schools and dispensaries Clearly there is a grave concern about possible wasted, poorly utilised or otherwise unexploited resources in IT application for rural development. The reason for this healthy skepticism arises in this context of sustainability, projects that work well enough as long as they are in the pilot stage and managed by the agency that was chosen to implement the project. We therefore, need to adopt a new strategy that will ensure that we invest adequately in education and training for the sustainability of the project that yield expected returns.

The target would only be achieved if certain operation strategies are structured to translate and execute the objectives. This would involve both development of suitable organisational structures and appropriate operational links. Government’s recognition for this project as a national project plays a vital role for its actual implementation. Operational links to the project team can be attained by interaction of project team and its user group consisting of industries, eminent members of public with interest in the relative subject (User Expert Group), between steering groups comprising of department/ministries and business experts group.

How is it possible? If is the most common and toughest question. We should survey the landscape of technical opportunities. IT divisions should be created. Web sites of every department should be launched, offices should be provided with personal computers, e-mail, internet access and a good networking system.

The rapid growth of ICT (information and communication technology), resources available and initiation from certain sectors promises a good future for an E-Governance in Nepal. Certain sectors like NTC, NRB and NTB etc. have already launched static web pages. Kanchanpur and Bharatpur District Development Committee have already started a pilot project linking its VDCs to DDC and private sectors like jobsnepal, nepalnews which have shown encouraging results.

But the drawback lies on the users and its lack of awareness towards the potentials of the available resources. The information that floats around us needs to be understood in a better way and every individual should try to provide inputs according to their viewpoint and conveyed to the concerned authorities. They should know how to use the electronic means for an effective interaction between the government and the citizens. After the emergence of pro-active knowledge societies, government will then have no choice but to constantly improvise the available technologies to bring in greater efficiency, accountability and transparency in their functioning. Only then we could be confident about implementing this terminology which would ultimately bring about full participation of the individuals to government affairs. This will surely to lead individual empowerment, there by upgrading growth in human and socio-economical status.

Need

It is not the whole system of e-governance that we have to evaluate but rather the users and their potentials that has to be considered for the better system and functionality. It takes more than just a few men of vision for such a system, we need to aware everybody and wait for their active participations. It will then fulfill the saying "it is not the leaders who govern us but it is we who let the leaders govern us."

This article in jointly prepared by Sushil Bhatta, Muskan Shrestha, Niraj Raimajhi, Samyak Manandhar and Anjula Pradhan.

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