Organizational learning and knowledge in public service organizations: A systematic review of the literature

This paper is a systematic review of the literature on organizational learning and knowledge with relevance to public service organizations. Organizational learning and knowledge are important to public sector organizations, which share complex external challenges with private organizations, but have different drivers and goals for knowledge. The evidence shows that the concepts of organizational learning and knowledge are under-researched in relation to the public sector and, importantly, this raises wider questions about the extent to which context is taken into consideration in terms of learning and knowledge more generally across all sectors. A dynamic model of organizational learning within and across organizational boundaries is developed that depends on four sets of factors: features of the source organization; features of the recipient organization; the characteristics of the relationship between organizations; and the environmental context. The review concludes, first, that defining 'organization' is an important element of understanding organizational learning and knowledge. Second, public organizations constitute an important, distinctive context for the study of organizational learning and knowledge. Third, there continues to be an over-reliance on the private sector as the principal source of theoretical understanding and empirical research and this is conceptually limiting for the understanding of organizational learning and knowledge. Fourth, differences as well as similarities between organizational sectors require conceptualization and research that acknowledge sector-specific aims, values and structures. Finally, it is concluded that frameworks for explaining processes of organizational learning at different levels need to be sufficiently dynamic and complex to accommodate public organizations.     

Creativity and technological learning: the roles of organization architecture and crisis in large-scale projects

Creativity increasingly takes place in organizational settings best described as large-scale, long-time duration projects. Such projects, directed at the development of complex products such as aircraft, autos and computers, are characterized by high levels of complexity including ambiguity as to the ultimate outcome and design of the product. In developing these types of products, firms design organizational structures that are composed of many multi-functional teams, each responsible for the design of some sub-system of the overall project. Through a process of inductive theory building based on a case analysis of one such organization, we propose that creativity is affected by multiple levels of interdependence. We find that even the best attempts at developing an organizational architecture to handle such complexity are never complete and that periodically crises arise during the design process. These crises are significant events where creativity occurs and new technical knowledge is generated, allowing the organization to realize its project objectives. Although the case analysis centers on the relation of context to creativity, we argue that creativity leads to technological learning, which we define as a form of organizational learning.     

企业环境下个人获取知识和输出知识能力对组织公民行为影响的研究

很多研究者关注企业组织环境下个体如何获取和输出知识、以及个体获取和输出知识与其前因和结果的关系,但是,这些研究至少在以下两方面有待进一步完善:一是未考察个体获取和输出知识对组织公民行为的作用机制,二是鲜有研究将获取知识和输出知识同时纳入研究范畴中。本研究的目的正是希望针对以上问题,考察企业环境中个体获取知识能力和输出知识能力对于组织公民行为的影响机制。对216个样本的实证研究结果表明,个人获取知识能力能够提升个人组织公民行为,而且这种影响是通过输出知识能力的完全中介作用实现的。本研究结果不仅丰富了个体学习和组织学习的相关理论,而且为企业推动组织学习提供了新的思路:企业管理实践中,只有在组织中对人们"获取知识"和"输出知识"齐抓共管,才能更好地促进个体组织公民行为,更好地建设学习型组织,推动组织的可持续生存和健康和谐发展。     

The Role of Project and Organizational Context in Managing High‐tech R&D Projects

High‐tech organizations often struggle to manage different types of R&D projects. Evidence from research and practice suggests that managers frequently categorize and manage projects based on the extent of change triggered in product, process, technology, and market dimensions. However, this can create challenges in high‐tech organizations. This study investigates how high‐tech organizations manage R&D projects based on their learning goals. First, we argue for the benefits of categorizing R&D projects based on the degree of exploration and exploitation learning goals. A qualitative case study from four high‐tech business units involving 10 R&D projects helps understand the different types of projects based on their learning goals. The case study shows that R&D projects in high‐tech organizations typically fall into three categories based on their learning goals: Radical innovation projects, Incremental innovation projects, and Hybrid projects. Second, we iterate between literature and evidence from our qualitative data to theorize how project context and organizational context affect project performance depending on the type of project. The data for the empirical analysis come from a multilevel survey of 110 R&D projects across 34 high‐tech business units. Results show the importance of designing project and organizational context differently for the three types of R&D projects. Collectively, this study offers a new perspective on how to manage high‐tech R&D projects.     

Task partitioning in new product development teams: A knowledge and learning perspective

R&D alliances and outsourcing elements of the new product development process are now commonplace practices among many firms. However, little previous work has examined how these organizational choices influence project knowledge and learning. Based on a comparison of three new product development projects in the software industry, this paper examines how task partitioning in the project influences learning and knowledge development within the firm. The paper suggests that internal development projects encourage synthetic learning and development of architectural and tacit knowledge; in contrast, outsourcing and joint ventures encourage analytic learning and development of component and explicit knowledge.     

Organizational Learning under Organizational Impermanence: Collaborative Ties in Film Project Firms

In the last two decades a lot of research has been devoted to unveiling the processes through which organizations learn and store knowledge. This research is typically concerned with organizations lastingly engaged in the provision of goods or services. Permanency is usually presumed in order for the encoding of inferences from history to take place. But what if organizational permanency cannot be assumed ex-ante? Project firms represent an interesting case in point. A project firm is a transient form of organization that ceases to exist as soon as its single target is achieved, as such it does not exhibit stable structures nor does it exhibit ostensible history-based paths upon which to build its choices and nurture its organizational knowledge. This apparent paradox can be resolved, in part, by extending the view from the isolated project to the relational context in which project firms operate. Using longitudinal data from the U.S. feature film industry, we show that the process of organizational formation and dissolution that characterizes this context is underpinned by patterns of enduring collaborations among interdependent industry participants. We build on these findings to speculate on processes of learning and remembering that interpenetrate project firms’ boundaries, by being embedded within a texture of stable interpersonal ties.     

Network learning: Episodes of interorganizational learning towards a collective performance goal

Little is known about learning processes in horizontal networks. This study focuses on networks as learning entities, i.e. learning by multiple organizations as a group, and the mechanisms involved in developing and addressing a network-level performance goal. By using a narrative approach, we gather in-depth primary data from network members to examine: how do firms engage in network learning? and, how is network learning coordinated towards a performance goal in a horizontal inter-firm network? Our findings comprise two learning episodes: ‘learning how to compete’ and ‘learning how to perform’. These episodes help us to understand network learning processes; the relationship between network learning and organizational learning; and the regulatory role a hub firm provides towards a collective performance goal.     

Identifying and managing persisting tensions affecting strategic learning from projects

While research recognises that strategic learning from projects helps build organisation-wide knowledge capabilities, learning from projects still remains fragmented and is often prematurely discontinued. Although research demonstrated that persisting tensions affect project-based organising, little is known about specific tensions affecting strategic learning from projects. A single, in-depth case study in a multinational food processing and packaging corporation is used to explore paradoxical tensions affecting strategic learning from projects. The study uncovered three persisting learning tensions: project/organisational identity, short-/long-term-orientation and standardisation/flexibility. Seven strategies are proposed, supported by the empirical data, to respond to these tensions.     

Introduction: Knowledge Construction and Creation in Organizations*

While adopting a knowledge‐based perspective on organizations has been valuable, since, among other things, it enables us to see links between organizational learning and a firm's competitive advantage through the development of idiosyncratic capabilities, it has nonetheless tended to treat organizational knowledge as ‘given’, exploring how it is related to other ‘given’ variables. The focus of this special issue is to unpack the notion of organizational knowledge by exploring the processes and practices through which knowledge is constructed and created in organizations. A constructivist perspective assumes that ‘knowledge’ presupposes work and seeks to explore how what comes to be considered as organizational knowledge is established and validated (or fails to do so). By seeing organizational knowledge as work we can further probe into how knowledge is shaped by organizational strategies and incentives and, more radically, how power and politics influence the struggle between competing bodies of knowledge in organizations.     

组织结构对组织学习与知识转化关系影响研究

创新依赖于组织学习。但是,知识如果没有在组织中被充分的分享,那么它的作用是有限的。即,为了实现知识的转化,知识分享的支持系统——有效的组织结构必须存在。本文通过组织学习的角度,探讨组织学习与知识转化的关系,以及组织结构的障碍在其中如何发挥作用。     

Innovation in Small,Project‐Based Construction Firms*

Relevant literature is synthesized to provide a holistic picture of our current knowledge of innovation in small, project‐based firms, highlighting significant gaps in the broad areas of ‘focus and outcome’, ‘organizational capabilities’, ‘context’ and ‘process’. Research findings from fieldwork focused on the construction industry are offered to address these gaps. In particular, a consensus model is given of the organizational factors dynamically at play. It is shown that typically the innovations of small, project‐based firms are closely tied to their operational activities and are pushed forward by owners who utilize very scarce resources to make progress in the interstices of normal business. This leads to an emphasis on taking up established technologies through ‘learning on the job’. Growth per se is not an important target. The motivation to act is generally to get past a survival mode of operating and to achieve stability by satisfying clients. These characteristics contrast with large organizations, especially in terms of the role of the owner, the close focus on niche markets and the lack of slack resources to innovate in parallel with normal business. It is hoped that these results will be of interest to other sectors where small, project‐based firms operate.     

Perception of learning culture and concerns about the innovation on its use: a question of level of analysis.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between organizational members' perception of learning culture and the concerns about the innovation, and the influence of these factors on the use of one innovation (ISO 9000) in the Malaysian public sector. This study was guided by the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) (Hall and Hord 1987) and the dimensions of the learning organization (Watkins and Marsick 1993, 1996b). The study involved 628 people from eleven government agencies that had been using the new system for at least a year. The study provided a model for operationalizing the assertions and theories of both organizational development and learning organization scholars especially that a more adaptive learning-oriented culture would facilitate the implementation of change. The examination of learning culture facilitated the understanding of how members within the organization perceived their learning culture, and subsequently its relationship to their use of the innovation. The analysis of concerns illustrated the fit between the innovation and feelings and perceptions of the individual members about the innovation. On an individual organizational basis, the regression analyses showed that the model was able to explain the variance in use of innovation in each organization. However, a comparison of regression weights across the organizations told a very different story. The results showed that the combination of variables that explained the use of innovation varied radically from organization to organization. The findings raised questions about appropriate levels of analyses for such studies. The study suggests that theories that try to explain organizational innovation implementation be tested across organizations and take into account organizational context. Otherwise, they could lead to inaccurate conclusions.     

Brokering knowledge: Linking learning and innovation

This paper presents a model of innovation, knowledge brokering, that explains how some organizations are able to routinely innovate by recombining their past knowledge in new ways. While existing theories of organizational learning and innovation are useful, the links between them are crucial for understanding how existing knowledge becomes the raw materials from which individuals in organizations construct innovative solutions. This model develops these links by grounding processes of learning and innovation in the larger social context within which they occur. Using a microsociological perspective, this article draws together research spanning levels of analysis to explain innovation as the dissembling and reassembling of extant ideas, artifacts, and people. Previous research has suggested that firms spanning multiple domains may innovate by moving ideas from where they are known to where they are not, in the process creating new combinations of existing ideas. This paper more fully develops this process by linking the cognitive, social, and structural activities it comprises. Knowledge brokering involves exploiting the preconditions for innovation that reside within the larger social structure by bridging multiple domains, learning about the resources within those domains, linking that knowledge to new situations, and finally building new networks around the innovations that emerge from the process. This article also considers the origins of knowledge brokers as firms committed to this innovation strategy, the structural and cultural supports for the knowledge brokering process, and several obstacles to the process that these firms experience. Finally, I discuss the implications of this model for further research on innovation and learning, and the implications for other organizations seeking to establish their own capabilities for brokering knowledge.     

Not more learning logs! A research based perspective on teaching reflective learning within HR professional education

The challenges of teaching reflective learning, whilst not peculiar to the HR profession, assume a poignancy given HR's claim to be the natural custodians of ‘all things learning’. The paper discusses the impact of attempts to enhance the reflective learning curriculum within one professional HR programme. Tensions in terms of the positioning of reflective learning within a predominantly functionalist management curriculum can, in part, be ameliorated. Developing a capability amongst students for reflective dialogue and careful construction of assessment work, for example, can enhance engagement with reflective learning rather than simply ‘knowing’ about it. More problematic is impact beyond the classroom. Research revealed ambivalence in respect of transfer and significance beyond the specifics of the professional programme. HR graduates need a capability that extends beyond individual reflective learning and into creating and supporting reflective learning in organizations. Herein lies the distinctive and fundamental challenge facing tutors of reflective learning within HR professional education.     

学习能力与企业绩效:知识资源是中介变量吗

基于知识观和组织学习理论,本文就以下问题展开研究:其一,探讨学习能力与企业绩效之间的关系;其二,将知识资源视为影响学习能力与企业绩效的中介变量,探讨三者之间的关系;其三,考察组织内、外部学习能力对企业绩效的不同作用路径.研究结果发现,知识资源在内部学习能力与企业绩效之间扮演着部分中介的角色;而在外部学习能力与绩效之间扮演着完全中介的角色.本项研究较为深入地揭示了学习能力、知识资源与绩效之间的关系.     

Stakeholders’ roles in virtual project environment: A case study

The rising cost of resources within an organization, increasing capability of information technology, the need to conduct project at different places and availability of competent and inexpensive manpower elsewhere have promoted many companies to adopt project development in a virtual environment. Large scale projects have several full fledged projects conducted by different organizations. Therefore, such projects are called the project of projects (PoPs) here. As PoPs are influenced by stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle, the integration of various projects becomes challenging due to the risks associated with misaligned perceptions, cost, schedule, quality, human resources and communication.This paper describes project context and influencing factors for a PoP's progress in virtual environment and they are explained in terms of two case projects conducted by the author. It is highlighted that communication is an important issue when projects are conducted in virtual environment with different work culture. The communication models and case examples provided here are expected to add knowledge to managing projects in virtual environment.     

基于知识管理的敏捷组织学习二维度模型框架

如何在知识管理先进思想的基础上,充分利用信息技术来促进组织学习,是当前企业管 理的主要研究问题之一. 在剖析了两个具有代表性的组织学习模型基础上,提出了一种基于知 识管理的敏捷组织学习二维度模型框架. 在该模型框架中,充分考虑了组织学习的核心内容, 并围绕学习主体和学习工具的互动关系,对组织学习过程进行了构建. 文章不仅详细给出了该 模型框架的建立过程以及实施要素、原则和方法,而且通过一个案例具体说明了该模型框架在 企业项目建设中的实际意义和应用价值.     

Cross-cultural influences on organizational learning in MNCS: The case of Japanese companies in China

This paper draws on the social construction perspective and on social learning theory to examine the cross-cultural influences on organizational learning in MNCs. Social learning theory suggests that constructive engagement and member solidarity are key constituents of organization-based collective learning. Literature suggests, however, that cross-cultural differences in assumptions about social participation by organization members may impair organizational learning. The paper also reports a qualitative study, conducted at five Japanese-invested manufacturing companies in the Pearl River Delta, China. The research found that managers perceived Chinese frontline workers as lacking constructive engagement and member solidarity as compared with their Japanese counterparts, thus limiting organizational learning, and attributed these perceived differences to deep-seated cultural values. Attempts in two of the companies to ‘Japanize’ the workforces were reported to have had some impact, but appeared not to have substantially changed this picture. Urging caution regarding cross-cultural stereotyping and home country bias, we consider the implications for organizations with international manufacturing operations.     

Organizational Learning,knowledge creation,problem formulation and innovation in messy problems

This paper attempts to bring the discussion about knowledge creation, innovation and organizational learning to a level that addresses how messy problems are addressed and how the organizations must integrate the viewpoints of the key decision-makers, establish a process for testing their assumptions, include the context including the environment design, and to allow innovation and creativity to enter the choice of actions. It builds on the literature of problem formulation, innovation, and experimentation and on the articles in this special issue.     

组织知识转移与学习能力的系统研究

知识转移可以为组织带来比较竞争优势,而组织学习可以提高其对未来不确定环境的适应能力,因此,两者的共同作用可实现组织的持续成长.在回顾关于组织的重叠知识、知识转移以及学习的相关文献基础上,分析了重叠知识与组织知识转移,以及与组织学习的关系;从组织生态学角度构建了它们之间的关系模型,进一步论证了重叠知识可以充当优化知识转移效率与组织学习能力的调节器;最后给出了一些知识转移的管理寓意分析.