Towards the Continuously Learning Organization through Knowledge Networking - Case Swiss Re-Group

Organizational learning requires individual learning. On the other hand individual learning has to interact in a dynamic social environment in order to contribute to organizational learning. This relationship between individual and organizational learning can be conceptualized as a spiral of knowledge creation (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) where companies can turn into continuously learning organizations by enabling and managing the dynamic knowledge conversion processes between the individual and the organization, and between tacit and explicit knowledge. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the concept of a continuously learning organization based on the concept of knowledge networking. For this purpose we illustrate based on a theoretical foundation the realization of this concept by building up knowledge networks, analyzing the different networking types and discussing their roles within the Swiss Re Group, a global acting Insurance Company in Switzerland. Finally we conclude by summarizing our first findings and outlining steps for our future research.