Organizational learning as the creation of corporate competencies

Introduction In the last five years, there has been an explosion of articles about, and interest in, the learning organization. Clearly the concept has caught the imagination of writers on management and of many managers themselves. This is not surprising for it is clear from a range of research around the world that many contemporary organizations are faced with unprecedented environmental change and that speedy and effective adaptation is the key to survival[1-3]. That enterprises must organize to learn in such circumstances is virtually self-evident. What is much less clear, despite all the writing on the subject, is what they should try to learn and how effective organizational learning takes place and is translated into action. In fact, apart from agreeing that organizational learning is a good thing, there is very little consensus in the management field on what organizational learning actually is. The term appears to be little more than a powerful emotive symbol, like an icon or a flag, which excites commitment in devotees but to which they attribute very different meanings. This article briefly reviews some of the main contributions which have attempted to define effective organizational learning, particularly those that have had a formative impact on the field, evaluating their theoretical consistency and their practical worth in establishing a useful basis for managerial action and managerial development. Current contributions are found to be suggestive of the need for adaptation and change in organizations but to lack coherence; to be largely unrelated to enterprise strategies and focused on individual learning rather than organizational learning; and to provide an inadequate basis for managerial and corporate development. Empirical research undertaken on a large database of Australian cases in organizational change is then reviewed. This review uses empirical findings to make a case for an approach to understanding organizational learning that is directly linked to the strategic goals of organizations and takes seriously the notion that organizations are collectivities which can institutionalize learning. This approach identifies the construction of corporate competencies as central to creating and embedding learning around the strategic tasks selected by organizations. The article concludes by outlining the implications of this view for management development and for corporate development.