BACHELOR OF COMMERCE

BUS 378: Knowledge & Organisational Learning
Essay Outline:

How can HR management systems and practices in Singapore, be re-designed using KM and OL principles to increase innovation and competitive advantage over the next five years.

Introduction
2012 is marked as a significant year for Singapore’s workforce demographics. This is the year where the first batch of baby boomers turned 65 years old (National Population and Talent Division, Prime Minister’s Office 2012). Under the Retirement and Re-employment Act (RRA) in effect since 1 January 2012, while the statutory minimum retirement age remains at 62 year old, employers are now required to offer re-employment to eligible employees who turn 62, up to the age …show more content…

This process can be viewed as a single-loop learning whereby the HRD is now aware that the employee is interested in a certain development course. In a double-loop learning scenario, the HRD can review the development course requested by the employee and assess why the course was selected, how does it help to develop the employee and what are the key competences it will equip the employee with after attending the development programme. The HRD can then evaluate its training programmes and decide whether to incorporate the new programme into its existing training portfolio.

Individuals present different ways in how they prefer to learn, these preferences could be molded by personality traits, characteristics, culture and other variables (Honey and Mumford 1992).

It have been proven that while older person have larger and more profound basis of knowledge, the younger person has a better working memory and faster processing speed (Spitzer 2006), thus it is crucial that HRD takes all these into consideration when planning for training and development programme and avoid using a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Human Resource management should also create a culture that supports active learning and encourage knowledge creation. The knowledge creation dimension introduced by Nonaka and Hirotaka (1995) models how knowledge is created and transferred in an organisation (Figure 2). Using the