Abstract:
The need for organizations to survive in a changing environment has led to the development of the concept of a learning organization with a keen reason of harnessing competitive advantage. Higher Institutions of Education have strived to propagate a learning culture with an aim of fostering service delivery. Nonetheless, despite the significant overall interest in service delivery, so far, relatively little attention has been paid to how learning organization can be enhanced within and by academia .The main purpose of this study was therefore to determine the influence of learning organization on service delivery in private university. The research was carried out in Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Gaba campus .It was guided by the following objectives; examining the component of learning organization within Catholic university of Eastern Africa, Gaba campus, investigating the influence of learning organization on teaching and learning, exploring the role of learning organization in administrative functions and finally drawing recommendations on ways of learning organization implementation in CUEA-Gaba campus. To meet the above objectives, the research adopted case study design in order to generalize the findings to the entire private university fraternity. The targeted population included the entire body of the permanent staff of CUEA-Gaba campus; which encompassed 19 teaching and 40 administrative staff. As a result, census was carried out given that the population was smaller. The study used structured questionnaires to collect data from the respondents; however, an interview schedule was also used to collect data from the top management. The study employed descriptive statistics to analyze data and afterwards interpreted and presented them on graphs, table and pie-charts. The research established that the institution was not a pure learning organization; for instance, learning organization components like shared vision and mental maps were trivially present but on the contrary, it exhibited commendable quality of service provision. Consequently, it was observed that learning organization positively influenced both the academic and administrative service by making service provision better. Equally, the finding revealed a positive correlation of r=0.272 with p<0.05 between the existence of learning organization and quality service delivery. It was nevertheless appreciated that the challenge toward achieving learning organization seems to derail the concerted effort of maintaining efficient service delivery. The study recommends the creation of a learning culture where organization puts more emphasize on the work-learning dichotomy and above all, maintaining a rewarding system which encourages sharing of experience. Further research was recommended on public institutions factoring in other aspects that influence service provision with an exception of learning organization with more emphasis on level of customer satisfaction.