| dc.description.abstract | The Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides a collaborative forum for the United States government, academia, and industry to resolve emerging technology challenges. The talented board and advisory board volunteers are actively engaged in creating, curating, and distributing relevant resources and networking across sectors to ensure that access to information is available to all. ATARC’s priority in developing content remains its mission to develop an ever-ready workforce availed of contemporary technology that specifically advances the Federal Government entities and those who contract directly with them.
Because we are specifically interested in how the learning needs of ATARC partners are understood, we have partnered with the ATARC Workforce Transformation Working Group, which exists specifically to provide professional learning opportunities focused on the changing world of work. Like many organizations, ATARC lacks adequate data around employee and team needs of the organizations it hopes to serve, ATARC also needs to understand the organizational readiness of its partner organizations to make quick and strategic decisions about what learning opportunities to provide, urgent areas of primary focus, and best delivery model or learning design. We sought to ascertain the extent to which ATARC partners could be considered learning organizations—an indicator of their capacity to bring in and exploit learning--through qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. Identifying partner organization readiness to learn and apply that learning is critical to informing ATARC’s strategy in customizing its offerings and support.
Through our data collection which included surveys, interviews, and document analysis, we found:
1. Professionals surveyed do not believe there are formal learning community systems that are in place to share information.
2. Most professionals believe their managers encourage people to get answers across the organization when solving problems. However, many do not feel leaders share up-to-date information with employees about competitors, industry trends, or organizational direction.
3. Although most professionals believe that their organizations openly discuss mistakes to learn from them, many do not think those organizations support employees who take calculated risks. Those most concerned about this lack of support for calculated risks are those with primary responsibilities in technical research and development and general management. | |
