Organizational learning and unlearning: Transferring knowledge to greenfield versus acquisition joint ventures

This issue of organizational unlearning, which is defined as the discarding of old routines to make way for new ones, has received limited attention in the literature although studies of organizational learning have been proliferating. Based on a comparative case analysis of eight Sino-foreign joint ventures, this study examines knowledge transfer by foreign partners to greenfield versus acquisition joint ventures. Since an acquisition joint venture is formed on the basis of an existing state enterprise, the need for organizational unlearning arises. The study investigates how issues related to organizational unlearning affect each of the four stages of the transfer process, namely initiation, implementation, ramp-up, and integration. Its findings indicate that organizational unlearning is an important source of stickiness in inter-organizational knowledge transfer.