ABSTRACT

Organizational learning occurs because individual members of the organization learn. This does not mean that individual learning guarantees organizational learning. Rather, it means that no organizational learning occurs unless individuals learn. Government agencies encourage individual learning in a number of ways, including training and management development, communities of practice, intranets, and, increasingly, such Web-based communications as e-mail. Collectively, these and other information-sharing tools are part of the discipline known as knowledge management; they help enable learning when they are part of a comprehensive social system designed specifically to husband and exploit knowledge.