In this article, two standard and valuable ideas that are implicit and explicit in much contemporary conversation about organizational learning are examined. First, the idea that organizational learning involves dynamics of exploitation, i.e., processes by which organizations create reliability in experience through refinement, production, and focused attention (Levinthal and March 1993), and of exploration, i.e., processes by which organizations create variety in experience through experimentation, trialing, and free association (Marengo 1993). The second idea examined is that organizational learning is a multilevel phenomenon, involving dynamics of both intraorganizational learning, i.e., the learning that takes place within companies, government agencies, universities, hospitals, and other formal organizations (Argote and Ophir 2002), and interorganizational learning, i.e., the collective learning of organizations in formal interorganizational collaborations such as strategic alliances and networks (Larsson et al. 1998). Reasons for examining dynamics of exploitation and exploration: First, exploitation and exploration are crucial both to the stable ongoing operations of organizations and to organizational change (Crossan et al. 1999). Second, intraorganizational learning provides much of the experiential knowledge input that may be transferred between organizations as they collectively learn in networks, strategic alliances, and other forms of interorganizational collaborations (Powell et al. 1996). Third, the transfer and creation of knowledge between organizations provide additional input to the intraorganizational learning of the various collaborating partners (Oliver 2001). Fourth, the common tendency for modern organizations to extend their boundaries (Cooper and Rousseau 1999) suggests that "understanding the relation between experiential learning and routines, strategies, or technologies in organizations will require attention to organizational networks _ _ _ as well as to the experience of the individual organization" (March 1999, p. 86). An organizational learning framework Def: Organizational learning is the experiential productionand reproduction of organizational rules, leading tobehavioral stability or behavioral changes (Kieser et al.2001, Levitt and March 1988). Because organizational rules reflect previous experiential learning (Hedberg 1981), learning is accordingly not random or blind, but directed. 1. The code of received knowledge is learning from the beliefs and practices of individuals. 2. Individuals are learning the code.

Two themes characterize the organizational learning literature: one focuses on intraorganizational learning processes, and another focuses on interorganizational learning processes. This article stresses the need to cross-fertilize these themes of organizational learning by proposing a dynamic model of organizational learning within and between organizations. This cross-fertilization is important in order to understand how organizations may cope with the fundamental organizational learning problem of addressing exploitation and exploration, i.e., to create both reliability and variety in experience. In this article it is proposed that exploitation and exploration occur both within and between organizations and that they are deeply interlaced through intra-and interorganizational learning processes.

This article reports qualitative data on how the Swedish Public Employment Service classifies unemployed individuals as ‘occupationally disabled’ in order to transfer them to various labour market programmes.The article draws on a framework of medicalization, arguing that the individualization of the social issue of unemployment into a personal trouble of disability is a neglected yet important phenomenon that has interesting implications for theory and policy. By classifying some people as disabled in order to explain their unemployment, medicalization can be seen as an important yet so far neglected mechanism in understanding how this individualizing enterprise comes about. It is concluded that by medicalizing unemployment, the target for society’s intervention to fight the spectre of unemployment is primarily individuals’ personal troubles rather than any social issues.

As a result of their learning techniques, organizations tend to generate dominant behavior of either exploitation or exploration making a balanced attention to them hard to achieve. But how can the process through which this undesirable phenomenon develops be made more complicated? Largely this problem remains a neglected one in organizational learning theory. It is important to better understand how organizations can take measures to reduce the pathological effects that learning breeds. In this article I explore the idea of `complicating the organization' in order to constrain organizations from becoming swiftly locked in learning behavior of excessive exploitation or exploration. I suggest that contemporary organizations should complicate their learning through various interorganizational collaborations. In interorganizational learning activities, organizations have the potential to learn slowly because of being poorly focused in their attention to their experiences. Hence, they may remain open to reflect upon their current operations. They will be learning, but not in a too simpleminded and myopic way by reducing the speed through which competency traps of exploitation and exploration develop.

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