Supporting organizational learning processes through failure management

Learning from failures made along the product life cycle is an effective way for enterprises to increase product and service quality and decrease costs at the same time. However, the product life cycle is distributed in time and space and therefore the implementation of organizational learning processes have to bridge informational, conceptual and technological barriers. The organizational memory used to bridge these barriers is threatened by reorganization, fluctuation of personnel, and change of technology, thus requiring a explicit representation of the organizational memory which is more resistant to changes. This paper presents a framework for organizational learning processes adapted from literature and the support failure management can provide.