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The Exceptional Manager

Chapter 8: Learning in Organizations

The Issue of 'Managing' Learning?

In the AIM research we have noted that there are still often problems with definitions and measurement. Baumard and Starbuck, AIM, indeed raise questions about the underlying validity of any notion of organisational learning, whereas Antonacopoulou, AIM, has suggested that we need to adopt a more practice based perspective.

The field of knowledge management provides for interesting and challenging research questions, including, indeed, the extent to which as a field it should be seen as part of an on-going process of professionalization by particular groupings of experts (see Perkmann, AIM).

AIM research has been adopting a more strategic view of Organizational Learning by drawing attention to the way micro and macro forces may be integrated. Instead of 'managing learning', celebrating the complexity of learning by acknowledging neglected dimensions of learning as a social process. Focusing in particular on the role of learning in keeping the organization in tension, allowing the balancing of competing priorities, and the emergent innovation capability. This has also implications for how dynamic capabilities are conceptualized. Beyond changing routines there is scope for demonstrating how Dynamic Capabilities facilitate exploration and exploitation as learning modes that can create ambidexterity in learning capability (for instance see Antonacopoulou, E.P. and Chiva, R., 'The Social Complexity of Organizational Learning: Dynamics of Learning and Organising, Special Issue', Management Learning, 2007, Vol. 38, No. 3, and Antonacopoulou, E.P., 'The Relationship between Individual and Organisational Learning: New Evidence from Managerial Learning Practices', Management Learning, 2006, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 455-473).