Organizational Learning: Advanced Issues and Trends

INTRODUCTION

Despite the interest in issues of knowing and learning in the global strategy field, there has been limited mutual engagement and interaction between the fields of global strategy and organizational learning (Hotho, Lyles, & Easterby-Smith, 2015). Organizational learning with an appropriate leadership style is the important strategy for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) toward achieving innovation, high performance, and competitiveness (Vargas, 2015). Organizational learning is a type of learning and an important area of research that is concerned about the way organizations learn, therefore, increase their competitiveness, innovation, and efficiency (Abel, 2015). Organizational learning has the positive relationship with innovation capability (Salim & Sulaiman, 2011) and intellectual capital (Naghi, Gholamrez, Mehdi, Reza, & Majid, 2010).

The radical economic, social, and cultural changes experienced by the labor market within recent decades have emphasized the crucial role of learning process in individual's career development and organization's success (Manuti, Pastore, Scardigno, Giancaspro, & Morciano, 2015). Lazarová et al. (2013) indicated that the interest in organizational learning is brought about by new insights into the behavior of an organization from which the continued learning is expected. Organizational learning by team management is the main factor in the competitive global market which results with the competitive advantage (Serinkan, Enli, Akcit, & Kiziloglu, 2014). Organizations must have the easily accessible knowledge management (KM) system across the organization toward promoting organizational learning (Demirel, Arzova, Ardic, & Bas, 2013).

Organizational learning is essential in the rapidly changing environments, through seeking the new knowledge and the effective utilization of existing knowledge, in order to deliver the innovative capability in modern organizations (Dayaram & Fung, 2014). García-Morales et al. (2012) indicated that the development of new abilities and knowledge and the increase in the organization's capability enable organizational learning. Organizational learning can significantly improve family firms’ ability to counter by stimulating entrepreneurship (Zahra, 2012). Organizational learning partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and organizational performance and fully mediates the relationship between learning orientation and organizational performance (Real, Roldán, & Leal, 2014). Learning orientation significantly affects both innovativeness and organizational performance (Garrido & Camarero, 2010).

This chapter aims to bridge the gap in the literature on the thorough literature consolidation of organizational learning. The extensive literature of organizational learning provides a contribution to practitioners and researchers by revealing the advanced issues and trends with organizational learning in order to maximize the impact of organizational learning in the workplace.