The Learning Organization: A Foundation to Enhance the Sustainable Competitive Advantage of the Service Sector in Egypt

Abstract

An organization’s capability to learn and convey that learning into action quickly, is the supreme competitive advantage. The learning organization is the structure that eases the realization of such competitive advantage, it empowers employees, it deepens and enhances the customer experience and cooperation with main business partners and eventually improves business performance.Organizational learning is considered as the suitable process to develop knowledge resources and capabilities/core competencies (human capital, social capital and organizational capital) that engender ongoing values; which in turn yield persistence superior performance; which lead to sustainable competitive advantage within the context of the strategic management.

Then, the learning organization provide the necessary organic structure involving the necessary disciplines, principles and policies; according to which the organizational learning process had to take place - in the light of the environmental surroundings- to equip the human resources with the updating knowledge, innovative capabilities, behaviors and culture representing the convenient intellectual capital to produce ongoing value stream. Such value stream deems as a sustainable competitive advantage for such organization.

This paper, therefore, explores, discusses and analyzes the integrated role of Learning organization (as a structural entity) and the organizational learning (as an intrinsic know-how process) that takes place within such context; in helping firms working in the service sector in Egypt- whether they are public or private enterprises-to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, as the service sector in Egypt is almost the biggest and fastest-growing economic sector and represents almost 51 % of GDP. Whereby it embodies the locomotive of development for a developing country as Egypt.