Articulating Governance Mechanisms for Collective Learning

This paper seeks to shed light on the role that governance mechanisms at play within the firm have in organizational learning. Moreover, since different governance mechanisms co-exist within an organization, their alignments are of particular importance for achieving knowledge circulation within the organization. We here focus on knowing communities, seen as important locus for knowledge creation, and explore how the organization can take advantage of their cognitive activities. We argue in particular that such coordination can be realized at the governance level: formal rules set by the management provides a framework that can yoke the different norms sets followed by communities. Our proposals are confronted to a case study carried out in a large public organization.