Power, Status, and Learning in Organizations

The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Vegt for feedback and encouragement on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank participants in the " New Perspectives on Organization Science " conference which was held at Carnegie‐Mellon University in May, 2009. 2 ABSTRACT This paper reviews the scholarly literature on the effects of social hierarchy – differences in power and status among organizational actors – on learning in organizations and groups. We begin with the observation that theories of organization and group learning have tended to adopt a rational system model, a model that emphasizes goal‐directed and cooperative interactions between and among actors who may differ in knowledge and expertise but are undifferentiated with respect to power and status. While a rational system model has proven quite useful in articulating how knowledge might be stored, manipulated, represented, and deployed in order to generate new knowledge and insight, it has not adequately accounted for the fact that learning in organizations is enacted within formal and informal hierarchies of power and status that shape perceptions, motivations, and behavior. We review the theoretical and empirical literature on power, status, and learning in order to identify ways in which social hierarchy can affect key learning‐related processes and outcomes. Our review suggests that while power and status differences clearly present formidable challenges to collective learning, these challenges can be mitigated or even reversed when power is used to advance collective interests. Indeed, our review suggests that higher‐ranking actors who use their power and status in more " socialized " ways can play critical roles in stimulating collective learning behavior. We conclude by articulating several promising directions for future research that were suggested by our review. 3 The domain of organizational learning research includes research on learning at multiple levels of analysis, including individuals, teams, organizations and even populations of organizations. Theoretical arguments at any level emphasize the importance of the creation, retention (e.g., memory or storage), and transfer of knowledge for goal achievement, competitiveness, and continuous improvement (see Argote, 1999). The topic of learning has generated considerable and sustained interest within the organization and management research community. As one example, there are over 3,800 references to articles published in the 1991 special issue of Organization Science on the topic of organizational learning. Huber's (1991) and Levitt and March's (1988) reviews of the organizational …