Knowledge Management and the Organisational Learning: Towards a Framework Definition

Introduction

In the late 1990s, “the learning organisation” and the concept of “organisational learning” became unavoidable for managers, consultants and researchers. For any business or organisation, the ability to learn better and faster than its competitors became an essential core competency (Sugarman, 2001).

In the global business arena, organisations seek to develop mechanisms that allow them to succeed and achieve higher levels of performance. The competition is high, and the difference between success and failure is very tenuous. Ghoshal, Bartlett, and Moran (2000), point out that managing knowledge is a key factor for international business success. Knowledge provides the capability to identify, examine and capture market opportunities. Knowledge is also changing the way firms compete, particularly in international business where opportunities to create value are shifting from managing tangible assets to managing knowledge-based strategies (Kaplan & Norton, 2001).

Stata (1989) and Sinkula, Baker, and Noordewier (1997) suggested that organisational learning could definitely contribute for the process of organisational innovation as well as a mechanism of differentiation in the market, by gaining competitive advantages (Liao, Chang, & Wu, 2010). Thus, Knowledge is a key organisational asset that enhances productivity and performance (Rohde & Sundaram, 2010), and sustains the organisations with new learning approaches that help solving problems, now and in the future, and foster the acquisition of core competencies (Liao, 2003).

The “reality of learning” in a project environment can be considered constructed, maintained and reproduced through human practices within the project social context (Fox, 2000; Raelin, 1998). The human learning is constructed through continuous reciprocal interactions between people and the environmental stimuli and context (Bandura, 1977; Dodgson, 1993). Learning is profoundly linked to people and to their actions, as well as the conditions underlying its generation (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Billett, 2000). The project participants (team members) are exposed to a greater range of learning opportunities and are tacitly encouraged to develop their skills in “learning how to learn”. Although, according to Sense (2007): “Our culture is about “doing” and not about “reflecting”, and there is not always time to reflect and to share” (p.441).

Projects play an important role in achieving the learning that takes place within many organisations (Arthur, DeFillipi, & Jones, 2001; Keegan & Turner, 2001). A study conducted by McKinsey & Company and Darmstadt University of Technology (Takeuchi, 2001) reveals the complicated and dynamic nature of knowledge. After more than 400 personal interviews at 39 companies around the world (18 in Europe, 11 in North America and 10 in Japan), they discovered that knowledge is an asset:

• 1.

  that means different things to different people;

• 2.

  that can become outdated instantaneously;

• 3.

  that initially is often tacit, not codified;

• 4.

  the value of which increases when it is shared among people;

• 5.

  the generation of which cannot be planned scientifically; and

• 6.

  that can be recycled independently of ownership of physical assets.