Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: (2013),"Organizational learning culture and leader-member exchange quality: The way to enhance organizational commitment and reduce turnover intentions", The Learning Organization, Vol. 20 Iss 4/5 pp. 322-337 http:// dx.If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This paper seeks to present an empirical study on organizational learning in Indian educational organizations. Design/methodology/approach -The Learning Organization Profile (LOP) Survey is used as the tool for eliciting responses from the staff regarding the nature and state of organizational learning prevailing in educational settings. The study attempts to highlight the extent of organizational learning in technological institutes of repute in both the public and private sectors in India. Factor analysis and descriptive statistics have been used to analyze data and to make comparisons vis-à -vis ownership of organization and employee category. Findings -Results indicate that the extent of organizational learning is below the expected level in both public and private sectors. Significant difference exists between public and private organizations in terms of the extent as well as dimensions of organizational learning. As leadership has emerged as the most valued factor in the private sector institutes and third among eight dimensions in the public ones, the onus lies in leading these institutes with able managers who inspire the employees to learn and adapt. The management has opportunity to enhance the potential of the academic institutes for learning by choosing effective leaders who provide direction and vision for employees. The role of transformational leadership is important in the context of Indian technological institutes. Originality/value -Development of learning culture is becoming a dominant theme in the strategic plans of many organizations today. Hence, it is vital to investigate the nature and extent of organizational learning as prevailing in the sector of higher education and learning, specifically in the Indian context. The study differentiates organizational learning practices in public and private undertakings. It also examines the dimensions of organizational learning as experience...

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Purpose -The main purpose of the present study is to develop appropriate construct to benchmark occupational health and safety performance in industrial setting so that deficiencies can be highlighted and possible strategies can be evolved to improve the performance. Design/methodology/approach -Data envelopment analysis (DEA), being a robust mathematical tool, has been employed to evaluate the safety performance of industries. DEA, basically, takes into account the input and output components of a decision-making unit (DMU) to calculate technical efficiency (TE). TE is treated as an indicator for safety performance of DMUs and comparison has been made among them. Findings -A total of 30 Indian organizations under three industrial categories such as construction, refractory and steel are chosen for comparison purpose. It has been observed that safety performance of construction industries is consistently low as compared to other categories of industries. TE has been calculated using two types of models of DEA such as constant return to scale (CRS) and variable return to scale (VRS). A paired two-sample t-test indicates that TEs obtained using two models are significantly different. Mean efficiency of 30 samples is found as 0.898 using CRS model whereas same is calculated as 0.942 using VRS.Research limitations/implications -The limitations may be number of input and output components considered for each DMU. If different set of inputs and outputs may be considered, the results may be different. Another limitation may be the number of industrial sectors considered in the study. Practical implications -The method, being a generic one, can be adopted by the managers to assess present safety performance and find a suitable peer to which, it should follow to improve own TE followed by in what respect it has to improve. Industrial safety and occupational health concerns in industries is not only important from government regulation point of view but also essential for enhancing productivity and profitability to become competitive in the marketplace. The practical limitation may be collection data quantitatively from various DMUs because many a time the DMUs are unwilling to share data. Originality/value -This work proposes use of simple mathematical tool like DEA for benchmarking based on safety performance in Indian industries. In Indian context, safety performance of industrial settings has hardly been assessed. The study provides a simple but comprehensive methodology for improving safety performance. The study also outlines comparative evaluation of safety practices in different industries.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceptions of safety officers on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) norms extended to the workforce in Indian industries, understand implementation levels and find out deficiencies existing therein. Design/methodology/approach -In this study, the authors utilized factor analysis to develop an instrument specifically responsible for assessing OHS norms in three major industrial sectors through a broad-based questionnaire survey. The pattern of influence of input parameters on outputs such as injury level and material damage is difficult to establish, possibly due to existence of some nonlinear relationship among them. Therefore, a neural network approach is adopted to carry out sensitivity analysis and identify important deficient items. Findings -Exploratory factor analysis has been carried out on the responses to the designed questionnaire. In total, nine factors with 23 items have been extracted and interpreted. As neural networks are capable of mimicking human cognitive process, the perceptions mechanism of safety officers can be easily modeled via neural networks. Sector-wise deficient items have been identified and strategies for their improvement have been proposed.Research limitations/implications -The major limitation may be the number of industrial sectors considered in the study. Although the proposed model is quite generic, its performance needs to be tested with other categories of industries. Practical implications -Although perceptions of safety officers on their immediate work environment help to formulate constructive safety policy and procedures, involvement of a few representatives from the workforce during the implementation level may assist to substantially reduce injury level and material damage, since the workers are more conversant with work practices, are exposed to risk environments and can sustain injuries if accidents occur. Originality/value -The paper uses advanced statistical and intelligent techniques for assessment of OHS practices. A comparative evaluation of present practices among three major types of Indian industry has been made. Further, the paper proposes an OHS instrument for Indian industry. The paper offers new directions for researchers to devise a comprehensive methodology that aims at reducing occupational health risks.

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