towards an alternative perspective on organizational learning ?

This paper introduces Social Worlds Theory as an alternative perspective on organizational learning. Social Worlds Theory has close resemblance with the practice perspective on organizational learning but contributes to this tradition by focussing on tensions and conflicts as well as processes of segmentation and intersection as a result of different commitments of social worlds to organizational activities. The paper starts with a discussion on the history of organizational learning and the latest practice-turn in particular the communities of practice perspective on learning. This will be followed by a critique on the communities of practice perspective, in particular the absence of conflict and agency. We will illustrate the potentials of using this perspective on organizational learning by means of two case studies on learning within and between two communities stemming from different social worlds. We close our paper with a discussion whether Social Worlds Theory perspective offers an alternative framework to study collective practice-based learning processes while at the same time looking at agency and conflict.