The idea that it is through ‘organizational learning
processes, that the firm adapts to its environment’ (1963:84)
The view that the firm learns from its experience’ (1963: 100)
Emphasize the role of rules, procedures, and routines in response to external shocks and which are more or less likely to be adopted according to whether or not
they lead to positive consequences for the organization.
An organization changes its behavior in
response to short-run feedback from the environment according to some fairly well defined rules. It changes rules in response to longer-run feedback according to some more general rules, and so on. (1963: 101/2)
Theory (Cangelosi
and Dill)
"Organizational learning" appeared in the title, and although the paper is based on tendentious data, it already makes a distinct contribution to debates in the field.
Starts to argue against the
rationality of assumptions underlying the Cyert and March model.
A model based on tensions between individual and organizational levels of learning, which is similar to the notion of organizational learning being a discontinuous process (Argyris and Schön, 1978).
Theory (Argyris and Schön)
It laid out the field as a whole very clearly, and their distinction between organizations with and without the capacity to engage in significant learning received a great deal of attention.
Other Works
Hedberg (1981)
Shrivastra (1983)
Daft and Weick (1984)
Made important contributions to the definitions of terminology, and to deeper perspectives on organizational learning, such as the distinction between learning and unlearning
Fiol and Lyles (1985)
The Special Edition of Organization Science (1991)
Contains
a number of highly cited articles
March (1991)
Huber (1991)
Epple, Argote
and Devadas (1991)
The Carnegie tradition which suggests that it is desirable to maximize the efficient use of knowledge in organizations, while recognizing that there are substantial, largely human, antecedents.
Simon (1991)
Brown and Duguid (1991)
Represent an alternative tradition that
regards the social processes of organizational learning as pre-eminent.
Senge (1990)
A foundational work and a popularizer because it rapidly became a key source for academics as well as an inspiration for practitioners.
Attracted enormous interest particularly because companies and
consultants were searching for new ideas to replace the largely discredited concepts of corporate excellence.
Ideas were highly attractive because they provided the potential for renewal and growth, with an underpinning of both technical and social ideas.
Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995
Set the standard for the emergent field with a rich mixture of concepts and field data.
Key Ideas
The notion of knowledge creation through transformations of tacit and
explicit knowledge.
The importance of national culture and philosophy for understanding the construction and communication of knowledge.
The interrelationship between the policy domain and the operational levels in the creation of knowledge.
The general principle that most dichotomies, such as tacit/explicit and mind/body, are false.
Criticism
There are suggestions that he misunderstands the nature of
tacit knowledge.
His methodology is flawed and that his theory is not adequately supported by the evidence available (Gourlay, 2006)
Knowledge Management
It starts with the neo-economic view of the strategic value of organizational knowledge and then uses familiar IT software such as databases and electronic conferencing to facilitate the acquisition, sharing, storage, retrieval, and utilization of knowledge.
Future Directions
An informal review of current citation patterns for recently-published papers
An overview of the predictions from authors who have contributed to this Handbook
The results of our own discussions as we have developed the Handbook