Organizational Learning

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on organizational learning. Organizational learning is viewed as routine-based, history-dependent, and target-oriented. Organizations are seen as learning by encoding inferences from history into routines that guide behavior. Within this perspective on organizational learning, topics covered include how organizations learn from direct experience, how organizations learn from the experience of others, and how organizations develop conceptual frameworks or paradigms for interpreting that experience. The section on organizational memory discusses how organizations encode, store, and retrieve the lessons of history despite the turnover of personnel and the passage of time. Organizational learning is further complicated by the ecological structure of the simultaneously adapting behavior of other organizations, and by an endogenously changing environment. The final section discusses the limitations as well as the possibilities of organizational learning as a form of intelligence.

Organizational Decline Research Review: Challenges and Issues for a Future Research Agenda

“…Our study shows growing influence of the behavioral theory of the firm, considering learning and psychological factors in decision-making (Levitt & March, 1988). The threat-rigidity approach, represented by the article of Staw et al (1981), especially offers explanations for poor organizational decision-making processes under stressful situations, such as organizational decline.…”

“…It is made up of articles that show the theoretical approaches used to analyze organizational decline through different perspectives: organizational ecology (Amburgey, Kelly, & Barnett, 1993;Hannan & Carroll, 1992;Hannan & Freeman, 1977Miner 1990;Tuma & Hannan, 1984;Tushman & Anderson, 1986), evolutionary theory (Nelson & Winter, 1982), contingency theory (Thompson, 1967) and organizational learning (Cyert & March, 1963;Levitt & March, 1988 For the third period, from 2003 to 2014, the first factor was called actions and decline in turnaround situations, but the difference between this factor and its equivalents for the other periods is that it focuses more specifically on turnaround strategies and actions, and also on situations of divestment. The works on turnaround are included (Bibeault, 1982;Hambrick & Schecter, 1983;Robbins & Pearce, 1992;Schendel, Patton, & Riggs, 1976) as well as an important article by Pearce and Robbins (1993), which introduced the two-stage model for turnaround that has often been used and cited.…”

Situating organisational learning and public participation: Stories, spaces and connections

“…The memories of individuals within an organisation are also a component of this broader memory (e.g., Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011;Gherardi, 2009), and can be accessed through more informal discussions, anecdote and the travelling of certain narratives. Organisational routines and practices are a further locus of organisational memory (e.g., Levitt & March, 1988;Schatzki, 2006), incrementally incorporating new knowledge, skills, assumptions and problem definitions, and being constantly re-accessed through their repetition. An arguably more generative form of organisational memory is the organisational narratives and stories discussed above (e.g., Garud et al, 2011;Linde, 2009), which simultaneously store and transmit past knowledge and assumptions.…”

Strategies of Post-entry Foreign Expansion: Speed-up or Slow-down?

“…Organizational learning is routines-based, history-dependent, and target-oriented (Levitt & March, 1988). Vol.…”

“…Both country specific experience in a particular host country and general international experience which obtained by global operations could impact the strategic choices on MNCs (Padmanabhan & Cho, 1999). Learning through direct experience makes the accumulated experience stored in organizational memory, and promotes local search with organizations (Levitt et al, 1988).…”