This chapter presents the roles of e-learning, organizational learning, and knowledge management (KM) in the learning organizations, thus describing the practical and theoretical concepts of learning organization, e-learning, organizational learning, and KM; and the significance of e-learning, organizational learning, and KM in the learning organizations. The utilization of e-learning, organizational learning, and KM leads to the improved organizational success in the growing knowledge economy. The appropriateness of e-learning, organizational learning, and KM is influential for the learning organizations to serve practitioners and researchers, increase business performance, sustain competitiveness, and fulfill expected accomplishment in the learning organizations. The chapter argues that promoting e-learning, organizational learning, and KM has the potential to increase organizational performance and achieve strategic goals in the learning organizations.
TopBackground
E-learning is rapidly increasing and has become one of the key e-commerce applications with a growing commercial market in the near future (Sun & Wang, 2011). With the support of the Internet, many organizations and schools have adopted the idea of applying the e-learning system, which is considered as one of the most important services provided by the Internet (Marković & Jovanović, 2012). E-learning technologies provide a virtual classroom environment on the Web toward supporting teacher-student and student-student communications, course material distribution, as well as online student assessments (Lau, Yen, Li, & Wah, 2014).
In the last two decades, the concept of organizational learning grew in academic publications as itself (Easterby-Smith & Lyles, 2003), and as a process of KM (Dingsoyr, Bjornson, & Shull, 2009). Increasing attention is paid to organizational learning, with the success of contemporary organizations strongly contingent on their ability to learn and grow (Za, Spagnoletti, & North-Samardzic, 2014). Organizational learning is an important determinant of organizational innovation in technological colleges (Hsiao, Chang, & Chen, 2014).
KM has been used by a large number of research disciplines (Ackerman, Dachtera, Pipek, & Wulf, 2013). Knowledge is bound to individual or collective actions (Ozel, 2012). Knowledge-based approaches to the organization offer the valuable insights into some of the central issues of governance and organizational design (Grant, 2013). KM has become increasingly significant in global business (Liu & Abdalla, 2013). Managing knowledge constitutes one of the major strategic advantages of an organization (Lunnan & Zhao, 2014).