Organizational learning and emotion: constructing collective meaning in support of strategic themes

Missing in the organizational learning literature is an integrative framework that reflects the emotional as well as the cognitive dynamics involved. Here, we take a step in this direction by focusing in depth over time (five years) on a selected organization which manufactures electronic equipment for the office industry. Drawing on personal construct theory, we define organizational learning as the collective re-construal of meaning in the direction of strategically significant themes. We suggest that emotions arise as members reflect on progress or lack of progress in achieving organizational learning. Our evidence suggests that invalidation – where organizational learning fails to correspond with expectations – gives rise to anxiety and frustration, while validation – where organizational learning is aligned with or exceeds expectations – evokes comfort or excitement. Our work aims to capture the key emotions involved as organizational learning proceeds

Building a Learning Organization

{Excerpt} A learning organization values the role that learning can play in developing organizational effectiveness. It demonstrates this by having an inspiring vision for learning and a learning strategy that will support the organization in achieving its vision. For organizations wishing to remain relevant and thrive, learning better and faster is critically important. Many organizations apply quick and easy fixes often driven by technology. Most are futile attempts to create organizational change. However, organizational learning is neither possible nor sustainable without understanding what drives it. The figure below shows the subsystems of a learning organization: organization, people, knowledge, and technology. Each subsystem supports the others in magnifying the learning as it permeates across the system

Organizational learning: Where do we stand? Where do we want to go?

The field of organizational learning has developed dynamically but is not ready for closure. This article reviews the cultural contexts in which research on organizational learning has been conducted since the 1960s, and the intellectual traditions that underpin the field. It traces changes in the types of organizations studied and in the range of agents of organizational learning attended to by scholars. The processes and models that have shaped the discussion over the past decades, and changes in the tone or color of the way organizational learning has been treated are also highlighted. Trends in organizational practices are identified as well. On the basis of this broad stocktaking exercise, key challenges for future research on organizational learning and knowledge creation are outlined. --

Virtual Organizational Learnign in Open Source Software Development Projects

We studied the existence of virtual organizational learning in open source software (OSS) development projects. Specifically, our research focused on learning effects of OSS projects and factors that affect the learning process. The number and percentage of resolved bugs and bug resolution time of 118 SourceForge.net OSS projects were used to measure the learning effects> Projects were characterized by project type, number and experience of developers, number of bugs, and bug resolution time. Our results provide evidence of virtual organizational learning in OSS development projects.Virtual organizational leraning: Organizational learning curve: Virtual organization: Open source software development: Project performance

Organizational knowledge dynamics

The paper addresses the main issues concerning knowledge conceptualization and knowledge dynamics, in the context of Romanian organizations. The links between organizational knowledge, organizational learning and organizational culture are being investigated, with the aim of conceptual clarification and paradigm unification, in a domain of increasing research interest, where increasing complexity implies the risk of increasing confusion.knowledge dynamics, organizational learning, organizational intelligence, organizational culture.

Organizational Learning: A Process Between Equilibrium and Evolution

This paper aims to analyze learning as a two-type process. A dynamic equilibrium process represents a stable learning process, that may express an individualistic behavioral learning or an organizational adaptation. A teleological process represents an intentional, goal-oriented, learning process. This second type of learning can express an individualistic cognitive learning or a managerial organizational change. It is argued that this learning typology can helps to understand why similar organizations or individuals may learn differently when confronted to the same environmental stimuli.Dynamic Equilibrium; Learning; Organizational Learning; Teleology

Learning Histories

{Excerpt} How can we gauge the successes and failures of collective learning? How can the rest of the organization benefit from the experience? Learning histories surface the thinking, experiments, and arguments of actors who engaged in organizational change. In the corporate world, the precedence ascribed to individual learning can run counter to organizational learning, the process by which an organization and its people develop their capabilities to create a desired future. Without doubt, developing capabilities is a precondition of a desired future; however, if the essence of a learning organization is that it actively identifies, creates, stores, shares, and uses knowledge to anticipate, adapt to, and maybe even shape a changing environment, the driving concern must be reflection, communication, and collective sense makingfor action across its personnel. (Proponents of organizational learning grumble that people in organizations perform collectively yet still learn individually from incomplete, heterogeneous information to which they ascribe different meaning.) Intra-organizational interaction for learning cannot depend on serendipity: it must be encouraged, facilitated, recognized, and rewarded. Increasingly, narration is deemed a good vessel for bridging knowledge and action in the workplace

Leadership, Organizational Learning and Performance in Small and Medium Firms

CEO's leadership is an organizational dimension that has not been carefully studied in the literature on small firms. Particularly, as organizational learning is now anchored as an important part of the building and sustaining of the small and medium firm's competitive advantage, how leadership characteristics may moderate the positive link between organizational learning and performance is important for managers and researchers. We could hypothesize that, combined with organizational learning processes, some leaders' characteristics and behaviours are more important than others to lead the development of an organizational climate oriented toward innovation or performance. This paper presents the theoretical framework and hypotheses of this on-going research on the links between organizational learning, leadership and performance in small and medium firms.Learning; Absorptive capacity; Leadership

Stakeholder engagement as a facilitator of organizational learning

This paper examines the relationship between stakeholder engagement and competence building. Following the dual perspective of the firm, which indicated that managers deal with both transactions and competences concurrently, we argue that stakeholder interactions also concern both transaction cost reduction and value creation. Based on a review of the extant literature, we incorporated a micro-macro connection between organizational learning and competence building. Further to this, we developed a conceptual framework by linking stakeholder engagement and organizational learning. This framework demonstrates that stakeholder relations may have significant effects on organizational learning and thus stakeholder engagement can play the role of facilitator in building firm competences