Evaluation of IT Companies as Learning Organizations from the Programmers’ Perspective

The modern social science faces a new synergetic and social-ecological paradigm and the respective approaches in research activity. The synergetic approach allows for the investigation of a learning IT company as a “living” system, a synergic organization notable for its teamwork and team learning to ensure the introduction of innovations in the company and, along with that, a sustainable development and competitiveness of the company in a constantly changing environment. In its turn, the social-ecological approach allows a researcher to focus his attention on a continuous professional development of an individual programmer or a team of programmers by mutual cooperation and interaction with the whole IT company representing the environment of their professional activity and continuous learning. A learning organization has certain traits or indicators, which can be used for the evaluation of IT companies. The authors have developed a methodology for the evaluation of learning IT companies, which has been approved during the experimental research: a case study. 102 programmers working for various Latvian IT companies participated in the study. The aim of the study: to analyse the IT companies where the research participants work, evaluating them as learning organizations, as well as to assess the informational awareness and knowledge of the programmers about the continuous professional development and career growth possibilities at the respective companies. Among the 19 indicators (traits) of evaluation of a learning organization, the following three traits are the most typical ones for the IT companies where the research participants are working: (1) friendly atmosphere and mutual support within a company, cooperation when working as a team, sharing their knowledge, skills, competencies and experience while performing their work duties; (2) a company is trying to ensure its sustainable development and competitive ability; (3) self-education and continuous learning of a company to improve its activity and to diversify the variety of the target groups along with a continuous improvement of its products and services.