ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that organisational learning and boundary spanning are important concepts for corporate sustainability since they provide insights into processes of organisational change and development. It also shows that boundary spanning is a concept for acquiring, interpreting and processing external information. The chapter provides, based on the presentation of process models of organisational learning and knowledge creation, an integrated model that shows the relevance of boundary-spanning activities in different learning phases. It reviews the important similarities between the processes of organisational learning and product development. A review of the literature shows that the effective development of innovative products is based on external information and knowledge sources; hence boundary spanning and organisational learning are highly relevant in innovation processes. Boundary-spanning activities enable organisations to monitor, detect and interact with environmental forces and to transfer information across boundaries, thus playing an important role in maintaining organisational viability.
