Organizational Learning and Adaptation

The effect of experience, ownership and focus on productive efficiency: A longitudinal study of U.S. hospitals

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how the design and implementation of learning models for performance management can foster continuous learning and quality improvement within a publicly funded, multi-site community hospital organization.Design/methodology/approachNiagara Health’s patient flow performance management system, a learning model, was studied over a 20-month period. A descriptive case study design guided the analysis of qualitative observational data and its synthesis with organizational learning theory literature. Emerging from this analysis were four propositions to inform the implementation of learning models and future research.FindingsThis performance management system was observed to enable: ongoing performance-related knowledge exchange by creating opportunities for routine social interaction; collective recognition and understanding of practice and performance patterns; relationship building, learning for improvement, and “higher order” learning through dialogue facilitated using humble inquiry; and, alignment of quality improvement efforts to organizational strategic objectives through a multi-level feedback/feed-forward communication structure.Research limitations/implicationsThe single organization and descriptive study design may limit the generalizability of the findings and introduce confirmation bias. Future research should more comprehensively evaluate the impact of learning models on organizational learning processes and performance outcomes.Practical implicationsThis study offers novel insight which may inform the design and implementation of learning models for performance management within and beyond the study site.Originality/valueFew studies have examined the mechanics of performance management systems in relation to organizational learning theory and research. Broader adoption of learning models may be key to the development of continuously learning and improving health systems.

Community Education institutions face numerous challenges, including fluctuating resources and evolving educational policies, which necessitate strong organizational adaptation capacity. This systematic literature review examines how organizational learning processes support organizational adaptation in community Education institutions, identifies the challenges faced, and explores strategies to enhance adaptability. Using the PRISMA framework, searches were conducted in Scopus and ERIC databases, focusing on peer-reviewed articles published between 2020 and 2024. A total of 7 studies from Scopus and 25 from ERIC were analyzed. Data were extracted, and a thematic analysis was conducted to identify recurring themes related to organizational learning and adaptation. Results show leadership support, knowledge sharing, and a strong learning culture as key adaptive mechanisms. This study fills a gap in the literature by exploring organizational learning in community Education settings and offers both theoretical contributions and practical implications for institutional leaders and policymakers. The study highlights the importance of fostering a learning culture and leadership engagement to drive institutional adaptability. Policymakers should consider providing targeted support for professional development in community Education, recognizing its critical role in sustaining organizational adaptability. The review further emphasizes the need for educational policies that are not only regulatory but also capacity-building, enabling institutions to develop internal learning mechanisms that enhance resilience and responsiveness to societal changes.

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. ArticlesORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT THEORY DIVISION.Published Online:13 Dec 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.1993.10322513AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractThe article presents several research papers which focuses on organization and management theory division. The paper "Organizational Learning As Routine-Based: A Critical Look and a Supplement," by Paul Carlile critiques the concept of routines and how it deals with many of the classical problems associated in doing organizational learning theory. The perspective of a theory of practice is then used to augment the understanding of routines in organizational learning processes. The paper "Economic Specialization and Interdependence: A Value-Added Theory of Organization" asserts that the neoclassical foundations of the new institutional economics is a fundamental problem for the advance of organizational science. A new organizational theory is proposed which focuses on the value-adding process of organizations. The paper "Organizational Change Under Economic Adversity: A Reconciliation of Theories of Failure-Induced Change and Threat-Rigidity" develops a multi-level theory of the effects of economic adversity on individual, group and organizational decisions. It predicts that adversity increases search, but that the direction of change is contingent on group cohesiveness and on the organization's information systems, culture and past experience.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 1993, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 13 December 2017 Published in print 1 August 1993 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.KeywordsMANAGEMENTCORPORATE governanceORGANIZATIONAL learningINDUSTRIAL relationsCULTUREBUSINESS communicationDownload PDF

This research brings together the concepts of corporate branding and organizational learning in order to develop the competitive advantage of an organization. Corporate brand management has increasingly been seen as a strategic key issue from the point of view of shareholders / owners, top management and other stakeholders. This is due to the fact that in the ever increasingly turbulent, dynamic and competitive markets, corporate brands are ways of creating trust, stability, and differentiation in the market. Organizational learning prioritizes the creation and acquisition of new knowledge, and emphasizes the role of people in the creation and utilization of that knowledge. In this way, organizational learning presents an important route to performance, success and competitive advantage for the organizations. The strategic marketing literature reflects a growing interest in the role of competitive environment on a firm's marketing strategy and performance. Drawing on organizational learning theory and strategic choice theory, it is argued that a firm's strategic adaptation occurs through managerial perceptions of its corporate identity, which then contributes towards its corporate branding. The focus of this research paper is on exploring the impact of organizational learning on corporate branding of the firm. While the importance of these issues has been widely accepted, to date the linkages between organizational culture, learning, corporate branding and corporate identity have scarcely been examined together in the literature, particularly from an empirical perspective. There is some evidence that organizational learning is associated with employee commitment to enhance the corporate brands, but only a few studies have focused on the effect of culture and learning on corporate identity and corporate branding. This research paper explores the relationship between the two broad concepts, with empirical research on data collected from 5 retail organizations within the UK market.

Background: Organizational learning theory has retained considerable attention in the past decades from a wide array of academic disciplines in social sciences. Yet few integrative efforts have satisfactorily offered a comprehensive and systematic articulation of the concept of organizational learning with regards to: (a) its core constitutive dimensions and associated mechanisms; (b) the analytical levels from such mechanisms operate (e.g., workers, teams, organizations); as well as (c) their interplay. Methods: This article builds on a critical synthesis of predominant approaches in organizational learning theory (i.e., structural functionalist, social constructivist and middle range approaches), highlighting the contributions of each approach on the key analytical elements guiding our inquiry (i.e., core dimensions and associated mechanisms, analytical levels, interplay). Drawing from the work of sociologists Anthony Giddens and Margaret Archer on agency-structure theory, we develop a series of theoretical propositions supporting the Organizational Learning Practices (OLP) concept as a unifying heuristic tool. Results: OLP are defined as a set of collectively shared practices held by members of a given organization embedded in normative, political, and semantic dynamics. At the heart of such dynamics lies organizational knowledge as a power resource pivotal to the sustainable development of organizations, as well as that of their members. Conclusion: OLP offer promising answers to on-going debates in organizational learning theory, and we conclude by discussing concrete guidelines to advance research and practice on OLP.

Contemporary research into socio-cognitive foundations of organizational learning tends to disregard the distinction between declarative and non-declarative knowledge. By reviewing the literature from organizational learning research and cognitive psychology we explain that this distinction is crucial. We describe the foundations of organizational learning by referring to models that consider the interplay between individual and collective knowledge-related processes in organizations. We highlight the existence of a research gap resulting from the finding that these approaches have widely neglected the existence of different types of knowledge. We then elaborate on characteristics of declarative and non-declarative knowledge in general, consider organizations as structures of distributed cognition, and discuss the relationship between organizational knowledge and practice. Subsequently, we examine the role of declarative and non-declarative knowledge in the context of organizational learning. Here, we analyze (1) the cognitive and social mechanisms underlying the development of declarative and non-declarative knowledge within structures of distributed cognition; and (2) the relationship between alterations in declarative and non-declarative types of knowledge on the one hand and changes in organizational practice on the other. Concluding, we discuss implications of our analysis for organizational learning research. We explain how our integrative perspective may offer starting points for a refined understanding of the sub-processes involved in organizational learning and unlearning and may support a better understanding of practical problems related to organizational learning and change.

Learning Classifier Systems (LCSs) are a class of expert systems that use a knowledge base of decision rules and a genetic algorithm (GA) [9] as a discovery mechanism. The set of decision rules allows the LCS to represent and learn control strategies, while the robust search ability of the GA allows it to search for new rules based on the performance of existing rules. LCS were first designed to solve machine learning problems, especially classification problems. Classification problems are problems where instances of a data set belong to a set of classes, and the system needs to infer, based on past experience, the correct class (or classes) of new, previously unseen, instances. However, the features of LCSs are also very useful for solving reinforcement learning problems, a class of problems where the system should learn to operate in the environment based only on performance feedback. This paper considers LCSs as an approach to classification problems, more specifically a more complex kind of classification called multi-label classification. This paper analyses the default hierarchy formation theory presented by [14] as a way of favoring the hierarchical arrangement of rules, and also the organizational learning theory [17] for adjusting the degree of individual and collective behaviors. We suggest a new method, combining both organizational learning and default hierarchy formation, for solving multi-label problems. The preliminary results with a simple multi-label problem show the potential of this method. Final discussion presents the conclusions and directions for further research.

Poor performance indicates that an organization's routines are not well suited for its environment and prompts decision makers to search for solutions. However, results conflict regarding how this search process influences risk taking in organizations. Managers in some organizations facing actual or expected performance shortfalls tend to take risks, while managers in other poorly performing organizations avoid risky changes. This conflict is interesting because some level of risk taking appears necessary for organizations to remain competitive, adapt to their environment, and improve performance. This study examines several mechanisms that moderate risk taking following performance shortfalls. First, I draw from organizational learning theories to argue that organizations with limited operating experience are less buffered from failure, and hence that poor performance constrains risk taking at these organizations. Second, I argue that organizations with poor legitimacy are also less buffered, and hence that performance shortfalls also lead to risk aversion at these organizations. Third, I draw from structural inertia theory to suggest that older organizations are less able to support risk taking following performance shortfalls. A test of these hypotheses on the capacity expansion behavior of U.S. railroad companies generally supports these hypotheses, although the effect of age is weaker. The findings contribute to theories of organizational learning and to several perspectives in organization theory more broadly.

Organizational learning theory has long examined how organizations learn to perform better as they accumulate experience. Although experience accumulation is inherently related to the timing of the repeated activities carried out by an organization, the direct relationship between activity timing and organizational learning has not been examined explicitly in the literature and remains an open question. Organizational learning theory contains two competing perspectives on how timing should impact learning—one suggesting that iterating faster is better for learning and one suggesting that taking more time between iterations is more helpful. Here, we reconcile these perspectives and develop a theory about the boundary conditions between them, arguing that, in general, iterating more rapidly enhances learning but that iterations of novel or complex activities, or ones following recent failure, benefit from a slower pace. We conduct tests of this theoretical perspective using data from the entire history of the orbital satellite launch industry from 1957–2017, and we find broad support for our theory and hypotheses.

Prior reviews of organizational learning (OL) have noted an exponential growth in the literature through the 1990s and have expressed concerns about the lack of empirical research. In this paper, we review the literature published during the period 1990-2002 and take stock of the state of empirical research in OL. Based on the 123 articles reviewed, we note a phenomenal growth in empirical research and the emergence of a learning perspective. We discuss key research findings pertaining to internal and external learning, and the facilitators of organizational learning. We discuss the implications of the empirical research and suggest directions for future research.

Introduction Part 1: What is the Nature of Organisational Knowledge? 1. Learning Organisations and the Responsibility of Managers 2. Learning Organisations as Good Societies 3. Action Research, Power and Control Part 2: How is Organisational Knowledge Acquired? 4. Doing Research 5. Empirical Research 6. The Interpretive Research Paradigm 7. The Critical Theoretic Research Paradigm 8. Action Research Part 3: How is Organisational Knowledge put to Use? 9. Action Research in Organisations 10. New Theories of Organisation Part 4: What are the Implications for Living Theories of Organisation as Generative Transformational Processes? 11. What Should be the Focus of Management Education? 12. My Epistemology of Practice of the Superintendency 13. How One School is Fulfilling the Vision of Peter Senge's 'Learning Organization'

Through the lens of organizational learning theory, we develop and test a moderated mediation model of commitment‐based HR practices (CBHRP), absorptive capacity, organization structure and routines, and knowledge creation in ambidextrous organizations. We test two new individual‐level dimensions of absorptive capacity (AC) in ambidextrous organizations: ambidexterity and flow experience. This empirical investigation is based on 377 expatriates who responded to our survey over two time periods working in various multinational organizations' R&D centers in India. Our findings suggest that CBHRP is critical in predicting knowledge creation and AC in an ambidextrous organizational context. Furthermore, we find that AC mediates the linkage between CBHRP and knowledge creation, and organization structure and routines (OSR) act as a moderator. Focusing on expatriates in ambidextrous organizations, our study extends contextual understanding of ambidextrous organizations and integrates organizational learning and knowledge creation theory into strategic human resources management (SHRM) research.

This article reviews theories of organizational learning and presents a framework with which to organize the literature. We argue that unit of analysis provides one critical distinction in the organizational learning literature and research objective provides another. The resulting two-by-two matrix contains four categories of research, which we have called: (1) residues (organizations as residues of past learning); (2) communities (organizations as collections of individuals who can learn and develop); (3) participation (organizational improvement gained through intelligent activity of individual members), and (4) accountability (organizational improvement gained through developing individuals' mental models). We also propose a distinction between the terms organizational learning and the learning organization. Our subsequent analysis identifies relationships between disparate parts of the literature and shows that these relationships point to individual mental models as a critical source of leverage for creating learning organizations. A brief discussion of the work of two of the most visible researchers in this field, Peter Senge and Chris Argyris, provides additional support for this type of change strategy

A substantial amount of work in the field of strategic management has attempted to explain the antecedents and outcomes of organizational learning. Though multinational corporations simultaneously engage in various types of tasks, activities, and strategies on a regular basis, the transfer of organizational learning in a multi-task context has largely remained under-explored in the literature. To inform our understanding in this area, this dissertation aimed at synthesizing findings from two parallel research streams of corporate development activities: strategic alliances and acquisitions. Structured in the form of two empirical studies, this dissertation examines: 1) the strategic outcomes of alliance experience of previously allying partners in terms of subsequent acquisition attempts, and 2) the performance implications of prior alliance experience for acquisitions. The first study draws on the relational view of inter-organizational governance to explain how various deal-specific and dyadic characteristics of a partnership relate to partnering firms’ post-alliance acquisition attempts. This model theorizes on a variety of relational mechanisms to build a cohesive theory of inter-organizational exchanges in a multi-task setting where strategic alliances ultimately lead to a firm’s decision to commit further resources. The second study applies organizational learning theory, and specifically examines whether frequency, recency, and relatedness of different dimensions of prior alliances, beyond the dyad-level experience, relate to an acquirer’s superior post-acquisition performance. The hypotheses of the studies are tested using logistic and ordinary least square regressions, respectively. Results analyzed from a sample of cross-border alliance and acquisition deals attempted (for study I) and/or completed (for study II) during the period of 1991 to 2011 generally support the theory that relational exchange determines acquiring firms’ post alliance acquisition behavior and that organizational routines and learning from prior alliances influence a future acquirer’s financial performance. Overall, the empirical findings support our overarching theory of interdependency, and confirm the transfer effect of learning across these alternate, yet related corporate strategies of alliance and acquisition.