Organizational Learning: Some Basic Questions and Answers

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.

Organizational learning is important in today’s dynamic and discontinuous environment of change.This study attempts to test the theoretical underpinning that organizational learning is related to competitive advantage. Through personal interviews and mailed surveys, 94 responses from employees of the petroleum industry were used in the regression analysis. Empirical findings show that theoretically assumed dimensions of the learning organization and organizational learning contribute significantly towards the achievement of competitive advantage. Multiple regression analysis showed the existence of significant relationships between seven independent variables and the dependent variable of competitive advantage. Strategic thinking and team learning explained 59.2% and 22.3% of variance respectively in achieving a competitive advantage. A discussion of the results along with implications and recommendations are provided.

This study focuses on 458 small and micro enterprises in China's software and infor-mation technology services sector. Using purposive sampling, data analysis was con-ducted through regression analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the impact mechanisms of transformational leadership and organizational learning on non-R&D innovation, as well as the moderating role of innovation policies. The empir-ical results reveal that transformational leadership including establishing a vision, employee motivation, and individualized consideration significantly drives non-R&D innovation in technology application, process optimization, and market innovation of micro and small enterprises. This driving effect is realized through organizational learning as a key mediating mechanism. Innovation policies amplify the impact of transformational leadership on non-R&D innovation, but have a limited moderating effect on its interaction with organizational learning. This suggests policy tools more likely alleviate resource constraints over directly intervene internal learning process. This study has developed a model of "leadership—learning—innovation," to clarify the role of leadership in shaping organizational atmosphere and learning processes. These elements are the key in stimulating innovation when resource constraints could be the barrier for business development, which physically and psychologically support the business in organizational innovation and develop a theoretical guide for enterprises towards innovation. Furthermore, the findings would be useful for enterprises to en-hance innovation through leadership transformation and learning organizations, and for policymakers to improve policies for businesses in innovation corporation.

Organizations which apply new ideas can be successful in the fiercely-competitive business environment. This research aims to investigate the role of "Radical and Incremental Innovations on the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and organizational learning and performance.180 managers of Isfahan Estill Company were answered research questionnaires including a researcher-made questionnaire. In order to analyze data, t-value test, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations were used. SPSS and Amos18 software were used for analysis. Findings showed that KM influences on organizational performance and learning (through innovation) directly and indirectly. Furthermore, also knowledge utilization had influence on incremental and radical innovation. This is while no significant influence of knowledge sharing on radical innovation. Therefore, managers are advised to try to improve employees’ knowledge in order to finally influenced on organizational performance and learning.

In this chapter the authors examine how AI applications support specific learning and training strategies in organizations, empowering individuals to develop their skills, allowing organizations to make data-driven decisions, and ensuring that learning is an ongoing and engaging process. Research shows that AI is an excellent instrument for learning in organizations as it aids in the preparation of instructional materials and helps learners progress in many different ways. So, there seems to be a need for a specific approach to AI pedagogy, which focuses not only on what AI can do but also on which learning activities and learning objectives can be supported by AI applications. As AI technology continues to advance, it will play an even more significant role in shaping the future of learning and development in the organizations, but this should always follow a humanistic perspective and a critical approach.

Most of previous studies concerning transformational leadership focused on trait as well as behavior theories of leaders, organizational commitment, and operational performance, but lacks in discussion over business value sharing which is supposed not only to enforce the cohesiveness, but also to invigorate employees in hunting targets. Accordingly, this study intends to combine variables of organizational communication and organizational learning as mediators to convey commands or values, so as to examine the conceptual framework that how transformational leadership (involving both trait and behavior theories) affect the business value sharing through organizational communication and learning mechanism. Additionally, 391 questionnaires, designed by Likert 5 scale, were sent for survey in a domestic home specificity retailing store (including braches in other 5 regions) and 270 valid questionnaires were collected with 69.05% response rate. This study conducts LISREL to verify the structural equation model and hypotheses. The statistical outcome reveals that transformational leadership would indirectly influence the business value sharing (the path coefficient is 0.43(superscript ***)) through organizational communication and organizational learning. Given the four business values that this home specificity retailing store attempts to deliver to all employees and that are customer oriented, high quality, low cost, and rapidly response, managers of the home specificity retailing store are suggested to pay more attention on offering a platform or proper environment to support informal and horizontal communication, which then will raise the mutual cognition and in turn facilitate knowledge flow. Besides, in light of the significant impact of organizational learning, managers should plan a set of customized curriculum and heuristic training mechanism, reasonable motivation methods, and embedded process community of practice so that employees are stirred to progress themselves in capabilities and simultaneously combine the business value with self-achievement.

Organizations constitute the restructuring conditions to maintain their functions and enable adaption to new competitive conditions for modern changes as a part of globalization. In this context, the emerging concept of learning organization and organizational learning provide opportunities for creating new information, access to information, sharing and transferring information issues. The concept of organizational literacy is considered as an important component of the information literacy for organizations in terms of surviving in the varying marketing conditions, keeping alive the organizational memorials, adapting to the organizational culture and gaining competitive advantage. In this study organizational learning and organizational literacy concepts were explored in the literature as related concepts in terms of organizational identity and organizational culture. The results were obtained via literature review and reflected the importance of two complementary concepts, organizational literacy and organizational learning, on learning organization.

This chapter describes a multi-level adaptive network modelAdaptive network models for mental processesMental process making use of shared mental modelsShared mental model in the contextContext of organisational learningOrganisational learning in teamTeam-related performances. The chapter describes the value of using shared mental modelsShared mental model to illustrate the concept of organisational learningOrganisational learning, and factors that influence teamTeam performances by using the analogy of a teamTeam of match officialsMatch officials during a game of football and show their behavior in a simulation of the shared mental modelShared mental model. The chapter discusses potential elaborations of the different studied concepts, as well as implications of the research in the domain of teamworkTeamwork and teamTeam performance, and in terms of organisational learningOrganisational learning.

This issue's look at learning organizations begins with a brief overview of the basic components of a learning organization – learning, memory, and organizational learning – and how they can be supported by today's information technologies.

PurposeThis study aims to propose a new research agenda for the theories of “organizational learning” and the “learning organization” in relation to the public sector. The research agenda can be used by researchers to make explicit accounts of how and where the results from their studies advance the current state-of-the-art in the intersection between public sector and organizational learning and/or the learning organization.Design/methodology/approachA combined systematic and bibliometric review methodology is applied based on the research that has been published in the past three decades.FindingsThrough an analysis of 238 journal publications obtained from the Scopus database, the authors determine the leading authors, countries, highly cited papers and take the stock of current literature. Similarly, by analyzing papers published between 2010 and 2020, the authors identify current tendencies and emerging themes of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector and offer avenues for future research.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is potentially the first, fully refereed study published reporting on a bibliometric and a systematic review of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector.

Trust and learning are topics that have attracted a great deal of recent attention. However, there is an important link between the two that has not been explored fully. In this paper, we seek to examine two key empirical questions: how does organisational trust influence learning? How can a firm's organisational context help improve trust and learning? The paper is based on a survey of 109 profit centre managers in a leading European multinational company. The paper seeks to explore the relationships between their organisational context, trust and learning within their profit centres. The findings of the study suggest that organisational context has an indirect influence on organisational trust, via the unit's operating performance. Stronger the performance, better the trust. Trust was also influenced by the procedural fairness within an organisational unit. Organisational trust in turn would appear to have a significant influence on organisational learning. Despite the small sample and other limitations of the study, the paper points to a useful way in which organisational trust and learning can be influenced. The administrative practices of an organisational unit, especially its resource support and procedural fairness, have an important influence on trust and learning.

The burgeoning literature on resilient health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) provides limited insights into the practice of resilience-building. To address this operational shortcoming, we explore the potential of health ministries to become 'learning organizations' to help foster resilience. We adopted a multi-stage, iterative methodology comprising multiple purposive literature searches, the selection and application of a conceptual framework from the 'learning organizations' literature, and expert opinion to expand on the framework with illustrative examples from LMICs. The principal finding of our prospecting assessment and appraisal is that many LMIC health ministries possess assets necessary for mounting a structured learning process for fostering increasingly resilient health systems. These assets include learning management strengths in systematic problem-solving, experimentation, self-analysis, learning from others and knowledge transfer. In addition, recent methodological advances in measuring progress towards becoming a learning organization enhance resilience-building potential. All health ministries, however, face substantial challenges in trying to realize their learning potential. They have to recognize the value of their learning assets and harness them in the service of a resilience-promoting learning agenda. Learning management and measurement skills must be complemented by supportive environments, sound leadership, and incentives that reinforce learning. The absence of models of sustained learning organizations in health sectors in LMICs and other countries hinders progress. Furthermore, our understanding of the dynamics of effective learning as well as the relationship between a learning organization and resilience is at a nascent stage. Increased attention to the role of adaptive capacity in fostering resilience may lead to more investment in systematic research on learning organizations and their effects on health system performance in LMICs.

This article deals with the role of purchase-supply relations in organizational learning and knowledge-creation in Japan and how such relations are currently undergoing change. Drawing on interviews with managers, it presents case studies of the customer-supplier partnerships of three prominent Japanese manufacturing firms: Hitachi, Matsushita, and Toyota. The Hitachi case illustrates in a somewhat novel way the prevailing paradigm of how long-term, high-trust supply relations in Japan enhance organizational knowledge creation, learning, and innovation. The Toyota and Matsushita cases demonstrate that the dynamics of learning are behind two very different kinds of change in keiretsu supply networks. Toyota's evolving relationship with long-term partner, Denso Corporation, appears to fit the popular view that globalization and technological change are eroding Japanese keiretsu ties. The Matsushita case, by contrast, demonstrates that these same forces of change in other industrial settings may in fact be strengthening keiretsu-style partnerships.

The convergence of social and environmental crises has urged organizations and institutions to apply systems-thinking principles as a way to better attend to ongoing issues and their inherent complexity. This qualitative empirical study inductively investigates the types of organizational-level cognition apparent in 20 sustainable wine producers in California applying different agricultural and organizational practices. We offer developments in the organizational cognition and learning literatures by presenting systems-thinking in the face of complexity as a unique empirical contribution. We differentiate between holistic (systems) and particularist (linear) cognition and dynamic ways of learning in organizations. Through semi-structured interviews, field observations, and secondary data from their website communications, we elaborate upon emergent findings and generalize a model of enacted cognition and organizational learning in a bidirectional manner with institutions. By focusing on producers with sustainable orientations, many implications related to responding to complex social and environment issues by applying holistic ontologies arise for further contemplation. Our insights serve as a foundation for understanding how organizations think in while dealing with ongoing complexity and long-term challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality.

All organizations, including universities, face multiple challenges in light of the age in which is described as an era of change, technology, openness and competition. In response to these transformations, traditional leadership models are no longer able to meet the challenges and requirements of the times which require these leaderships to adopt Transformational Leadership models. Its features and most importantly its support to organizational learning will help all leaders and their staffs to reach the highest grounds of motivations and morality. This paper deals with the nature and philosophy of transformational leadership in relation to organizational learning through a case study of the effectiveness of the Department of Student Activities at Qatar University. The study mainly aims to reveal the level of transformational leadership patterns and its relationship to organizational learning levels in the management of the Department of Student Activities at Qatar University. Few studies on the relationship of transformational leadership organizational learning have been conducted in the Arab world. From a practical perspective, this study is important because it will contribute to enforcing certain leadership trends and organizational learning at the Department of Student Activities. This can be achieved through highlighting the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational learning and accordingly present recommendations in order to enforce implementation of organizational learning and subsequently develop true leadership at the Department’s level. A quantitative approach has been utilized through a survey which has been distributed to all staff at the Department of Student Activities at Qatar University. The survey was developed based on the main aims of the study and based on an overview of the literature on the topic. The survey consisted of two sections; the first is designed for the concept of Transformational Leadership which was based on Bass & Avolio methods; while the second section of the survey was focused around organizational learning where Marquardt methods were used; all the answers were based on a parameter of 5. Data was analyzed based on the descriptive statistical methods available through the statistical analysis program SPSS. Results show that the availability of the practices of transformational leadership patterns (row modeling, intellectual consultations, humane treatment to staff, inspiration and motivation) appear to be in the middle range at the leadership level and that’s from the perspective of staff. Also, it seems that organizational learning (learning, professional development, organizational transformation, knowledge based leadership, and skills) falls at the middle range as well. The research indicates that there is a positive and pivotal correlation between the Transformational Leadership and organizational learning. The study recommends the adoption of the leaders of the Department of Student Activities at Qatar University of modern leadership methods. A great deal of work must be done to strengthen the organizational learning practices and to build an organizational culture focused on continuous learning and development and innovation, openness and participation. The study dealt with a specific theme for the relation between transformational leadership and organizational learning through a case study of the management of the Department of Student Activities at Qatar University. The study relied on a survey of employees through the questionnaire.