in 2008) notifies that business experts and researchers have emphasized on the effectiveness of the learning organization as tactics to advance business performance and to sustain organizations defending it from an increasingly unpredictable and complex business environment. Firestone did not do anything to sustain them as an organization. Thus they did not have any market research to find out what their competitors were doing. A modern business industry cannot wait too long without any research and be successful. Organization always need to be in hunt of market information, customer survey, target populations, statistics etc. to capture the big piece of market. This is the only way by which organization can survive in later future. (Buckler 1998 and Buhler 1998) outlines "the need to become learning organizations is an integral component to growth, innovation, effectiveness, and success of organization".
Firestone had a huge communication gap or vacuum among owners and higher management, lower management, and a lower level employee. Right after 1972 Firestone sales started going down due to the other competitors. Although none of the employee from lower level to mid management or higher management took an initiative to find out what was the possible reason for the sales to go down. There could be quite a few reasons for this. Either the employee were not bothered enough to take an initiative to help the organization in performance or they were not motivated to do so or maybe they were not empowered to take an initiative. This clearly shows that Firestone was lacking 'Self directed learning' (Guglielmino 2006). During the last part of tenure of the Firestone, business world was going through a 'Globalization'. In my viewpoint, more globalization leads to more competition, more competition leads to more pressure to be the best producer in the world in the lowest price as possible. To do this, businesses have to make their employee more productive to do things in better way. Here organizations need to implement a self development method. Guglielmino (2006) emphasizes on Self directed learning and explains each individual needs to practice as a self-directed learner to meet the necessities of the quickly changing workplace. After analyzing the assumption for self directed learning Guglielmino (1985) mentioned that each member of the organization must have the eight factors to be known as ready to aspire as self-directed learning. Narrowing it down later Chen (1998) offers only three elements that prove an individual to be self directed learners i.e., independence, the capability to make decisions, and the intelligence to articulate the norms. (Brookfield, 1986; Candy, 1987; Pratt, 1988) mentions about the other personal accredits that identifies for self-directed learners are confidence, commitment, self direction, and critical reflection. Fire stone employees did not have any of these qualities and that was a major factor for them to be failure in the market.
Business Practices 商业惯例
Since Firestone was already convinced that they had the best management team in entire corporate world they never thought of changing their management teams even during the time of downfall. Leader in the organization is very important and they could be a biggest cause of success or a failure of
