Assessing the Readiness of the Royal Military Police Corps Towards a Learning Organization : a Case Study on Royal Military Police Corps Training Center

As part of the Ministry of Defense's as well as the Malaysian Armed Forces in general and the Malaysian Army HQ's drive for responsive, high quality military services, the 2001 Booklet on Learning Organization suggested that the services must become a learning organization. The environmental forces that stem from the technological advancement, social changes, economic and demographic changes and consumerism have placed a great challenge to the military and army leaders in insuring their organizations achieved a world class status. Yet, the readiness and the application as well as the implementation of the learning organization ideal in the military organizations is viewed as significantly constrained by a number of factors, including the hierarchy, structures, culture, tradition, the leadership and so forth. To achieve such world class standards, organizations therefore must continually operate in a state of transformation. Approprite management styles thus are seen to be important in promoting and fostering a creative and learning culture within an organization. It is believed that appropriate management styles that have the abilities to develop a shared vision, special competencies, unity, a constructive thinking among employees, and to encourage open and honest communication throughout the organization. It would be the leaders who inspire a learning organization. Therefore, this study aims to assess the readiness of the military organizations in this case, the Royal Military Police Corps turning to be a Learning Organization by measuring 12 dimensions of the Learning Organization Practices Profile and 5 dimensions of Learning Organization Profile as well as identifying the management styles that are pertinent to learning organization by using Likert's (1976) four-management styles questionnaire and determines how these styles influence the learning organization practices and readiness drawn from the learning organization literature. This research offered an opportunity to assess the extent to which striving for this contributes to progress towards the learning organizational ideal