Academic literature on the topic 'Social sciences Organizational learning'

The purpose of this paper is to analyze existing knowledge on how organizations learn using multilevel comparison perspective of intra- and inter-organizational learning and to offer deeper understanding of the role that organizational design properties have in inter-organizational learning. Using Argote and Ophir (2005) findings on similarity vs complementarity fit developed for intra-organizational learning as an anchor, we analyze the role similarity vs complementarity fit of organizational configuration and coordination properties in inter-organizational settings. Our intention is to explicitly express the role of interorganizational design fit in inter-organizational knowledge management. Framework developed here systematizes and explains how strategic objectives of network creation (exploration or exploitation) should be aligned with learning mechanisms (learning by doing or learning by listening/observing) and organizational design properties. From the point of organization theory, this paper advances knowledge about the influence organizational design as intra-organizational property has on knowledge transfer between organizations and inter-organizational learning. Our framework helps managers understand how inter-organizational design fit can influence inter-organizational learning within the network. With regard to policy making, knowledge networks are becoming increasingly important as a mechanism of industrial development support, economic growth, increase of employment and poverty reduction and this paper points to mechanisms of inter-organizational design that can be used in managing these networks.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reexamine exploration-exploitation’s reciprocality in organizational ambidexterity (OA) research. OA figures prominently in a variety of organization science phenomena. Introduced as a two-stage model for innovation, theory specifies reciprocal reinforcement between the OA processes of exploration (eR) and exploitation (eT). In this study, the authors argue that previous analyses of OA necessarily neglect this reciprocality in favor of conceptualizations that conform to common statistical techniques. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose joint-variance (JV) as a soluble estimator of exploration–exploitation (eR-eT) reciprocality. An updated systematic literature synthesis yielded K = 50 studies (53 independent samples, N = 11,743) for further testing. Findings Three primary findings are as follows: JV reduced negative confounding, explaining 45 per cent of between-study variance. JV quantified the positive confounding in separate meta-analytic estimates of eR and eT on performance because of double-counting (37.6 per cent), and substantive application of JV to hypothesis testing supported OA theoretical predictions. Research limitations/implications The authors discuss practical consideration for eR-eT reciprocality, as well as theoretical contributions for cohering the OA empirical literature. Practical implications The authors discuss design limitations and JV measurement extensions for the future. Social implications Learning in OA literature has been neglected or underestimated. Originality/value Because reciprocality is theorized, yet absent in current models, existing results represent confounded or biased evidence of the OA’s effect on firm performance. Subsequently, the authors propose JV as a soluble estimator of eR-eT learning modes.

Purpose Nowadays, organizations are facing fast markets’ changing, competition strategies, technological innovations and accessibility of information. In such highly dynamic situations, many factors must be coordinated to realize effective decision-making. In addition, the definition of organizational intelligence is as follows: intellectual ability to answer organizational issues and focus on the unification of human and mechanical abilities for solving problems. This paper aims to investigate important factors (organizational learning, knowledge management and e-learning systems) that influence organizational intelligence. Design/methodology/approach Data have been collected from 290 personnel of tax administration of East Azarbaijan, Iran. For measuring the model’s elements, a questionnaire has been proposed. Surveys have been reviewed by experts with significant experiences in the organizational intelligence field. For statistical analysis of questionnaires, the statistical package social sciences 25 and SMART-partial least squares 0.3 have been used. Findings Findings from the study verify the validity of the design for an organizational intelligence assessment. The outcomes indicate that e-learning systems positively affected organizational intelligence. In addition, they show that the influence of knowledge management and organizational learning on organizational intelligence is important. Originality/value Organizational intelligence’s multidimensional nature makes it a very useful and essential management tool. Therefore, it provides beneficial results for the organizations’ managers to study the important factors affecting it.

The present article seeks to deploy a classical taxonomy for description of the features and dynamics of the organizational frameworks that accompany the research endeavors which have arisen in some very spectacular, expensive or intellectually promising science research fields in recent decades, such as high-energy physics, nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST), and cryogenic-driven exploration of dark matter and associated events. Such a taxonomy will associate or combine classical concepts and vocabularies in a way that effectively and fairly precisely captures the novel forms of learning and organizational structures contained in these cognitively and organizationally innovative domains.

This research sought to understand the role of organizational learning and the experience of the use of organizational learning for the development of sustainability culture in life science companies. Therefore, the study utilized a phenomenological qualitative approach to find out the perspectives of life science companies and life science non-governmental organizations (NGOs) about the subject matter. Furthermore, this study was exploratory and inductive and used a combination of research methods (triangulation). It was found that organizational learning creates sustainability awareness and engagement which contributes to the development of sustainability culture. This in turn would lead to the organization becoming a learning organization that focuses on sustainability. Government policies, quality management systems and internal standards serve as factors that create awareness of sustainability issues and encourage life science small-medium enterprises (SMEs) to continuously engage in sustainability business practices. It was found that various learning methods can be used internally and externally to learn about sustainability. However it is important that learning that is done externally or on an individual level be shared with the organization in a group or organizational level. The study acknowledged a heightened awareness for more sustainability focused practices within the operations of life science companies, however the financial constraints negatively influence how they prioritize their actions. It also identified how collaborations with life sciences NGOs help facilitate the implementation of a long-term sustainability vision and strategies into life science companies.

For-profit social enterprises are facing the dual challenges of fulfilling social purpose on the one hand and surviving business competition on the other. Being a sustainable for-profit social enterprise, the company must balance between economic, social and environmental aspects throughout their business operations. In order to achieve the desired end of sustainability, organization need to keep learning about the social needs and the business environment in order to develop sustainable business processes, and better fulfill their purpose as organizations formed to create social value. The study aims to fill the gaps in sustainability research literature about organizational learning in for-profit social enterprises by exploring how effective learning processes occur at individual, group and organizational level and how to facilitate these learning processes to improve sustainability. The study develops an analytical framework by combining the 4I framework for organizational learning process (Crossan et al., 1999) and an AKO (activities, knowledge source, outcomes) framework for understanding learning activities, knowledge sources and learning outcomes. Four for-profit social enterprises in both Denmark and Sweden are chosen as cases. Based on findings, three organizational learning mechanisms are identified on selected cases. Practical implications and insights are also generated for for-profit social enterprises to facilitate organizational learning for sustainability.

In a globalized social welfare market, where international and national NGOs influence social service delivery in community’s worldwide, the demands on mutual exchange, shared responsibilities, and transnational collaborations has increased. However, there are some challenges that NGOs face in this work. Lack in coordination of donor funded projects have enabled overlapping responsibility in service provision and a rivalry between NGOs in retrieving funds, witch in it turn has hindered the communication of knowledge between NGOs in the social work field. To create good practice, the basic assumption is that NGOs have to be able to learn from past experiences, a process known as organizational learning. One way of realizing organizational learning, is through evaluation. The success of an evaluation is further closely linked with the utilization of the knowledge gained. The purpose of this study is to discover how knowledge gained through an evaluation made by the Swedish organization IOGT-NTO, has been used within the non-governmental organization of UYDEL, and how this knowledge is communicated to the organizations stakeholders. To realize our purpose, we conducted a field study within UYDEL in Kampala, Uganda. The material, collected through interviews and observations, was later transcribed and analyzed, in relation to our theoretical framework. The theoretical framework includes basic theories on organizational learning, evaluation and communication. Our results indicate that issues that initially introduced themselves in this evaluation, later was reintroduced in our material, and thus still remained a problem within UYDEL. What seemed to hinder organizational learning was the organizations over-dependency on its donors, which affected its sustainability, and could be seen as a consequence of the misplacement of recourses within the organization.

As the topic of sustainability is gaining a lot of importance, organizations in the aviation industry are coming together to form networks. The purpose of the study is to understand the concept of inter-organizational networks as potential learning organizations and find out how facilitating processes that enable these inter-organizational networks like collaboration, communication and knowledge management operate within networks. Further research will explore processes of learning in networks to investigate alignment and resemblance with the concept of sustainable learning organization and provide an insight on organization structure and culture as enablers of learning. The basic design of the study consists of semi-structured interviews of two networks in the aviation industry as primary data in order to support research questions with empirical analysis. In addition, systematic review of academic literature and official websites of various network stakeholders was used as a secondary data collection source to discover track record of current research study in this field and identify knowledge gaps and areas for further study. Major findings include impact of formal and informal structure of networks on learning processes and objective setting for the network. It also depicts a need for a holistic and systematic approach at interorganizational level in order to form a learning organization. In the end culture was also identified as a learning enabler in networks that tend to be sustainable learning organizations.

Studies of organizational learning have found that military organisations can benefit from developing organizational learning. Successful implementation of organizational learning exists in the Israeli army. This study analyses the organizational learning capability of the Swedish army. By adopting the organizational learning capability theory by Visser and applying it to data collected through both documents and interviews, this study investigates the possible harmony and dissonance between the data. The findings discovered that while there is compatibility in two out of four dimensions, which is interpreted as the Swedish army having a good baseline to build their organizational learning; it also ascertained that there is a large dissonance regarding knowledge conversion. This is seen as a probable inhibitor for the implementation of organizational learning in the Swedish army. Specifically, is the lack of education in knowledge conversion seen as a large threat to the organization successfully implementing organizational learning. The study contributes to the research field with a comparison of the normative level and reality; in this it contributes with an understanding of which parts can be considered to facilitate and inhibit organizational learning. Furthermore, it gives the Swedish Army several recommendations to accelerate their capabilities in organizational learning.

Many researchers in numerous studies have focused on leadership style and organizational cultures, but there is an absence of research regarding leader personality traits and productive work cultures in Alberta's oil and gas industry. The purpose of this correlational study was to assess the relationship between leader traits and preestablished learning organization culture benchmarks within Alberta's oil and gas industry. Learning organization culture is an extension of Senge's learning organization theory. Simple random sampling was used to attain a population comprised of 52 employees in Alberta's oil and gas industry who were accountable to an organizational supervisor. Data were collected via the NEO-FFI-3 and the Learning Organization Survey; summarization was accomplished by means of an online third party survey administration service. Regression analyses revealed that each of the 5-factor traits was correlated to learning organization culture. When the model was changed to multiple regression using all traits together, only 2 traits remained significant. Openness to experience positively correlated with learning organization culture, whereas neuroticism was negatively correlated with learning organization culture. The implication for social change is that human resource personnel in Alberta's oil and gas industry can institute information provided in this research to identify and develop leaders who promote innovation in a learning organization culture. Innovation in Alberta's oil and gas industry assists to overcome environmental sustainability, augment technology inefficiencies, and decrease workplace personnel issues.

In 2015, Swedish Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) served as the backbone of society, assisting 162.877 immigrant refugees escaping conflict zones throughout the world. As the thrive to include newcomer refugees in the Swedish society continues, non-profits are facing numerous of challenges such as operating in highly competitive environments marked by shrinking grant budgets and increased pressure to provide long-term impact. To achieve optimal NPO organizational sustainability, the non-profit sector must therefore interact and learn how to address the aforementioned difficulties collectively. Furthermore, existing studies emphasizes the scarcity of research on learning through non-profit collaboration, as the knowledge management and organizational learning field has mostly concentrated on the for-profit sector rather than the non-profit sector. To fill this research gap, this study uses a qualitative approach to investigate NPO perceptions of interorganizational learning through collaboration, conducting ten semi-structured interviews with NPO employees working with newcomer refugees in Sweden. The results indicated that the NPOs’ learning outcomes connected to the need for collective sensemaking of the Swedish government’s new migration policies, which had a significant influence on the target groups prospects of remaining in Sweden. Moreover, the NPOs learned from unsuccessful collaborations, resulting in changes to the organizations’ routines and processes aimed at improving future collaborations. As a consequence, learning outcomes were incorporated into their organizational memory through digital Knowledge Management Systems such as Google Drive and Rise-Up. They were, however, heavily reliant on people’s willingness to share tacit and explicit knowledge, as well as an organizational culture that encouraged them to knowledge share. As a result, most non-profits either did not upgrade these systems at all or did not have the technological infrastructure to do so in the first place.

How do public organizations manage crises? How do public organizations learnfrom crises? These seemingly basic questions still pose virtual puzzles for crisismanagement researchers. Yet, the interest of the academic and practitionerrealms in crisis management has grown in recent years. In this doctoral dissertationEdward Deverell sheds light on the problems regarding the lack ofknowledge on how public organizations manage and learn from crises, with anumber of critical knowledge gaps in contemporary crisis management as thestarting point.   In the last few decades the interest in crisis management as a scholarly fieldhas grown. This developing field is composed of an increasing number of looselyconnected social science scholars concerned with issues of extraordinary events,their repercussions and the way in which they are managed by authorities,organizations, policy makers and other key actors. However, there are severallacunae to be dealt with in the emerging field of crisis management research.This dissertation sets the spotlight on four of these limitations of the crisis managementliterature to date.   First, influential scholars within the field call for increased structuration andfeasible models to help us understand and explain various important factorsinfluencing the crisis management process. In this dissertation I try to bridgethis gap by developing theory on crisis response and learning. Crisis responsesignifies organized activities undertaken by a stakeholder when a community ofpeople – an organization, a town, or a nation – perceives an urgent threat to corevalues which must be dealt with under conditions of uncertainty. Crisis-inducedlearning refers to purposeful efforts, triggered by a crisis event and carried out bymembers of an organization working within a community of inquiry, that leadto new understanding and behavior on the basis of that understanding.   Second, organizations play a key role in crisis management. Surprisinglyenough, however, crisis management research have only occasionally built theoryon how organizations respond to crisis. So far, the literature tells us moreabout crises as events than on how these events are actually managed. One reasonis the focus within crisis management research on highly unusual, big catastrophicevents and industrial accidents. Therefore, this dissertation explorescrisis episodes that affect specific organizations rather than entire communitiesor national governments. In addition, the dissertation brings together debateson crisis management and crisis-induced learning from a public managementand organizational perspective.   Third, crisis management researchers have to date dealt mostly with acutecrisis response and issues of preparedness, while the issues of crisis aftermathsand crisis-induced learning are still relatively unknown. However, althoughthis study recognizes the importance of crisis planning and sense-making, thisshould not lead to a relative neglect of the issue of learning from crisis. Crisisinducedlearning is important as crises are rare events with huge repercussions.Thus crises are opportunities to draw lessons in order to improve future managementand crisis response, and to mitigate the risk of future crises.   Fourth, the relatively few studies that have dealt with crisis-induced learninghave focused on learning after the crisis (intercrisis learning), while theoryon learning during crisis (intracrisis learning) is not as developed. My interestin both inter- and intracrisis learning obligates me to study crisis response andcrisis learning in conjunction. This means studying how organizations respondto crises and how they learn during and from these episodes. By focusing onprocesses of crisis response and learning under pressure – rather than pre-crisisplanning, threat perception, risk management and preparedness – the dissertationlooks into how organizations and their members manage the challenge ofcrises and how they take on, make use of and implement lessons learned fromone crisis to the next.   The lacunae outlined above are theoretical points of departure for this dissertation’sinterest in the extent to which public organizations learn from crises.Accordingly, the overall objective of the dissertation is to increase understandingof crisis response and crisis learning in public organizations. In doing so, Iconduct an abductive study of how public organizations respond to crises andhow they learn during and after these events. The term ‘abductive’ refers toa research strategy which is characterized by continuous movement back andforth between theory and empirical data.   The first step of the research process was grounded in the empirical world.The empirical contribution is a careful process tracing and case reconstructionof six cases involving Swedish public sector organizations. In the methodologychapter (Chapter 3) I describe the basis of the empirically bounded case study approach and case reconstruction and process tracing method. Six case studiesof organizational crisis management and learning were selected for furtheranalysis. The case studies were based on a variety of sources including posthoc accident investigations, articles, organizational documents and 129 extensivesemi-structured interviews with key crisis managers. The process tracingand reconstruction efforts led to case narratives, which were then dissected byidentifying dilemmas and critical decision-making occasions that were studiedin more detail. The following cases are explored in the dissertation: TheSwedish energy utility Birka Energi’s management of two cable fires that causedlarge-scale blackouts in Stockholm in March 2001 and May 2002; The cityof Stockholm’s management of the 2001 blackout and the repeated incidentin 2002; The Swedish Defence Research Agency’s (FOI) management of hoaxanthrax letters in 2001; and three Swedish media organizations’ (the Swedishpublic service radio Sveriges Radio, the Swedish private TV station with publicservice tasks TV4, and the Swedish public service TV station Sveriges Television)management of news work and broadcasting challenges on 11 September 2001(and to some extent following the murder of the Swedish Foreign MinisterAnna Lindh in September 2003).   As the case selection reveals, all organizations under study are not puregovernment organizations. Rather three organizations (Birka Energi, SverigesRadio and Sveriges Television) are publically owned corporations, while one(TV4) is a privately owned media organization. Accordingly, this dissertationclaims that ownership is not the only measure of ‘publicness’. Media organizations,for instance, are of great importance for democratic societies. The term‘public organization’ is thus in this dissertation not used in the sense of equatingto government, but rather in reference to the degree of which political authorityand influence impacts on the organization.   The theory generating approach that this dissertation takes on impliesthat the case studies are ‘heuristic’ case studies. The dissertation aims to promotenew hypotheses for further research rather than to produce generalizedknowledge. To this end the case studies are further analyzed by specific theoreticalapproaches suggested by prior research. This second step of the researchprocess is dealt with in some detail in the literature review. The literature reviewin Chapter 2 aims to bring an injection of organizational studies into the fieldof crisis management research. The review presents relevant studies from thefields of crisis management studies, organization studies (with special attentiongiven to organizational learning theory) and public administration and management.The review puts forth a twofold argument: There is a need of increasedknowledge not only about crises and how they develop, but also about how theyare actually managed by public organizations. However, prior crisis managementresearch with bearing on public management organizations are mostly based on either political executive foreign policy decision making or on veryspecific high reliability organizations operating in the pre-crisis phase. Hence,organization studies and public management studies should play a greater partin crisis management research.   The review also provides an overview frame for the study by highlightingrelevant research. The chapter discusses the problems of defining, categorizingand operationalizing key concepts such as crisis, crisis management and organizationallearning.   In the third step of the research process, the case studies are further analyzedusing theoretical approaches aimed at proposing propositions on how publicsector organizations may respond to crises, and how they may learn from theircrisis experiences. These analyses have been carried out with an aim to producestand-alone articles aimed for publication in international scholarly journals.Thus this dissertation differs somewhat from the typical public administrationdissertation as it is comprised of an analysis of several articles, as opposed to amonograph. The journal articles are published or accepted for publication inthe Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, the Journal of HomelandSecurity and Emergency Management, Public Management Review, and RiskManagement. The articles are reprinted in four empirical chapters (Chapters4-7), which make up the core of the dissertation. Introductory and concludingchapters aimed at bringing the discussion together have then been added.I present the first empirical analysis in Chapter 4. It looks into how organizationalculture affects strategy and adaptability in crisis management. The keyresearch question is: What mechanisms affect organizations’ ability to restructurein order to cope with acute crisis management challenges? In the study I propose atypology of temporal organizational responses to crises in public perception. Thetypology is based on organizations’ abilities to change strategy and adapt theirmanagerial and operational levels to deal with crises. The empirical data used toconstruct the typology covers three organizational crisis responses: 1) The utilityBirka Energi’s response to a cable fire that caused a thirty-seven hour blackoutin Stockholm in 2001; 2) The TV station TV4’s response in terms of how toreorganize and broadcast during the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks; 3)FOI, the Swedish National Defence Research Agency’s response to the anthraxletter scare of 2001 and 2002. The different organizational outcomes featuredby the typology reveal distinct aspects of organizational crisis management.According to the typology, the Fully Adapting Organization (TV4) managesto adapt both its strategy and its managerial and operational levels to deal withthe crisis. The Semi-Adapting Organization (FOI) changes its strategy but lacksthe capacity to change managerial and operational levels according to the newstrategy. The Non-Adapting Organization (Birka Energi) does not grasp theimportance of strategy change in the first place. Based on three inductive case studies, the study concludes that organizational culture plays an important rolein this process where the Semi-Adapting Organization and the Non-AdaptingOrganization were dominated by strong expert cultures which proved to be lessinclined to change. In contrast, the Fully Adapting organization had deliberatelyfostered an organizational culture in which flexibility – understood as thecapacity to readily adapt to changing demands – was a cornerstone.   The second empirical analysis is presented in Chapter 5. It deals with theissue of flexibility and rigidity in crisis response and crisis learning at two Swedishpublic organizations. The point of departure for the study is that the relationshipbetween crises, organizational crisis management response and learning hasto date been understudied. In an effort to broaden theoretical knowledge on therelation between crisis and learning, the study analyzes the crisis responses oftwo public organizations during a sequence of two failures. The empirical datais grounded in thorough process tracing and case reconstruction analyses ofhow the utility Birka Energi and the city of Stockholm managed two comprehensiveblackouts in March 2001 and in May 2002. The key research questionis: How does organizational rigidity and flexibility affect public organizations’ crisisresponse and crisis learning? A framework of rigidity versus flexibility in responseis utilized in the analysis. The findings are then discussed in relation to theirimplications for the nexus between crisis and learning. The study concludes byraising four propositions for further research.   The third empirical analysis is presented in Chapter 6. This study aims tocontribute to the debate on organizational learning from crisis by sheddinglight on the phenomenon of crises as learning triggers. In the study I pose thefollowing key research question: How can we analyze organizational learningduring and after crisis and what criteria should be part of the analysis? In an effortto unveil patterns of how organizational crisis-induced learning may appearand develop, I suggest a conceptual framework based on conceptual categoriesand answers to four fundamental questions: what lessons are learned (single- ordouble-loop)?; what is the focus of the lessons (prevention or response)?; whenare lessons learned (intra- or intercrisis)?; is learning carried out or blocked fromimplementation (distilled or implemented)? In the analysis section I explorethe practical applicability of the framework by using the same empirical casestudies as in Chapter 5. The final section suggests four propositions for furtherresearch.   The last empirical study is presented in Chapter 7. There I construct aframework of management, learning and implementation in response to crisis.My point of departure is a proposition from previous crisis managementresearch which posits that previous experience can shape crisis response as away of repeating former routines or as a precondition for improvisation. Thekey research question is: How do organizational management structures affect crisis response, learning and implementation? In the study I argue that flexibilityis closely connected to the way organizations learn – in behavioral or cognitivemodes. Moreover, these learning modes are connected to the role of managerialgroups, where I differentiate between centralized and decentralized top managerialgroups. In addition, two case studies of how two bureaucratic media organizations(Sveriges Radio and SVT) managed and learned from extraordinarynews events – most notably 9/11 and the assassination of the Swedish ForeignMinister Anna Lindh – are conducted. The findings show how the decentralizedmanagerial group learned in a behavioral fashion, by creating new formalpolicies and structures, while organizational members in the centralized managerialgroup relied on individual cognitive structures as a way of ‘storing’ lessonslearned. The study ends by discussing the findings from a crisis managementperspective, where I propose that the two modes of learning profoundly affectthe crucial issue of flexibility in organizational crisis response.The concluding Chapter 8 discusses and contrasts the findings and propositionsgenerated from the four separate empirical analyses. Here the role oforganizational structure and culture are highlighted by revisiting specific organizationalfactors that seem to impact on organizational crisis management andlearning processes, such as previous experience, flexibility and rigidity in crisisresponse and learning, and centralization and decentralization. These factorswere also outlined in the literature review. Further empirical evidence of howthe factors affect crisis response and crisis learning in organizations was foundin the four empirical analyses.   In addition, findings from the empirical studies also related to different types of learning processes such as intra- and intercrisis learning and singleand double-loop learning. Consequently these concepts are also deliberated upon in the concluding sections of the dissertation. As a final attempt to bring the propositions and arguments together, a framework of the crisis management and learning process is proposed. In regard to this venture, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the framework, and of the dissertation as a whole. As it is only based on data from six cases of Swedish public organizational responses to crisis, the framework is merely a visual schematic of a number of propositions to be further tested and validated by further research. However, the framework also has a few virtues. It is an attempt to approach the ambiguous nature of crises and crisis management processes. The framework may also assist in providing more sensible and practical conceptualizations, and thus bring us closer to definitions that remain close to everyday operations of practitioners involved in crisis management. This dissertation thus makes an effort to bridge the gap between crisis management scholars and practitioners. This is also an overall goal guiding research activities at the National Center for Crisis Management Studies (CRISMART) at the Swedish National Defence College, where the research behind this dissertation has been conducted.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2005.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The objective of this study is to gain an understanding of the role and function of Communities of Practice in managing organizational knowledge. This thesis views the organization as a learning system and focuses on key characteristics of a learning organization and Communities of Practice. The interrelationship as well as the details of these themes is described in detail. Some organizations seek to become learning organizations. Yet, implementation is elusive and is not often based on research about what constitutes a learning culture. The goals of this study is to review and analyze the key characteristics of learning organizations and Communities of Practice how they develop, and where does one start if a learning organization is to be created. A qualitative research methodology to answer the why and how question is followed to describe, explain and interpret the findings. The literature review covers specific definitions, aspects and general factors concerning CoP's and learning organizations.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van die studie is om die kenmerke van 'n leerorganisasie te verstaan en te beskryf, asook die doel en rol wat kennisgemeenskappe kan speel binne die konteks van so 'n organisasie om kennis te deel en te bestuur. Alhoewel sommige organisasies 'n werklike behoefte het om kennis te deel en te bestuur en uiteindelik as 'n leerorganisasie bekend te staan, is daar steeds as gevolg van onvoldoende navorsing probleme met suksesvolle implementering. Hierdie tesis poog om kennisgemeenskappe as een van die vele maniere om suksesvol te implementeer te beskryf. 'n Kwalitatiewe navorsingsmetode is gevolg om die hoekom en hoe vrae te beskryf, verduidelik en te interpreteer in die bevindinge. Die literatuurstudie sluit definisies, aspekte en algemene faktore rakende kennisgemeenskappe en leerorganisasies in.

In this research the empirical case of the “Partnership for Sustainability”, a long-term partnership between a major player in the German grocery retail industry and one of the biggest environmental organizations in Germany, was explored in order to gain an understanding of organizational learning processes within non-profit and business collaborations towards sustainability. Using existing theoretical concepts about organizational learning and sustainability in the field of cross-sectoral collaboration these fields of research are brought together. As a result, organizational learning processes within the non-profit and between the partnering organizations were identified and the associated learning results were pointed out. Therefore, essential changes and adaptations in the Partnership for Sustainability could be explored throughout theyears of the collaboration. Furthermore, the contribution of organizational learning processes to a cross-sectoral collaboration has been illuminated.

Organizational learning is a scientific field of growing importance. It has developed from classic and foundational works to the two disparate perspectives today: the acquisition and the participation perspective. The first understands knowledge as a substance, mind as a container, and learning as a transfer of a substance from one mind to another. The second perspective focuses on communities of practice and observes no teaching but rather goal-directed practical learning. We argue that both are incomplete and that there is a need for overarching perspective that would build upon multiple-theoretical and multi-level framework of social network theories. Beside connecting acquisition and participation perspective it addresses organizational learning as a multiplex and dynamic process at individual, group, intra-organizational, as well as relational level of research. This contribution proposes network perspective to intra-organizational learning and develops seven descriptive claims to be tested using real-life case studies of social networks within organizations. Both exploratory and confirmatory social network techniques are to be applied.

This paper describes a continuing study which uses a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods to identify factors which facilitate organizational and other types of collaborative learning. In this study, such learning is termed ‘social learning’, and refers to those factors which enable the sharing of knowledge and practice, and which foster generative learning. This paper’s specific focus is on the roles played by job satisfaction and morale in collaborative learning. The study to date has undertaken research in three settings: a tactical headquarters, a single service strategic headquarters; and a joint services strategic headquarters. The study’s long term aim is to develop architectures to support the development of organizational and information systems that enhance organizational learning and facilitate knowledge management.

This paper by Marcel LaFlamme explores new forms of connection and community for early-career researchers in less formal structures, often facilitated by social media and other communication technologies. By learning from these loosely institutionalized spaces, LaFlamme contends, scholarly societies as well as research libraries and their parent institutions can adapt to a changing environment and take steps to make scholarship more open and accessible.

Over the past several decades, the student population in the United States has grown more diverse by factors including race, socioeconomic status, primary language spoken at home, and learning differences. At the same time, learning sciences research has advanced our understanding of learner variability and the importance of grounding educational practice and policy in the individual, rather than the fiction of an average student. To address this gap, LVP distills existing research on cognitive, social and emotional, content area, and background Learner Factors that affect learning in various domains, such as reading and math. In conjunction with the development process, LPS researchers worked with ReadWorks to design studies to assess the impact of the newly implemented features on learner outcomes.