ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, we identified several theoretical concerns that continue to bedevil organizational learning theorists. In this chapter, we will summarize the light shed on these concerns by the empirical cases of this volume. Is organizational learning best conceptualized as changes in routines, policies, goals and paradigms as a consequence of information, ideas and experience; as ideational interaction among organizational entities; or as changes in organizational leaders’ ideas, beliefs, and paradigms? This answer, of course, is that organizational learning may occur in all of these ways. Maintaining the customary distinctions among social, organizational and individual-level analysis is not empirically valid or theoretically helpful – the social learning literature investigates learning among organizational personnel and clusters of organizations (in ecologies of learning) and “leaders” are not just individuals, but instead are personnel who occupy organizational roles. What has this volume contributed to our understanding of learning as a process and/or outcome? What have we learned about the different levels of learning sophistication or complexity within organizations?
