ABSTRACT
To understand how organizational learning differs from individual learning it is helpful to think of organizational members as having meaning structures that could be categorized as private, accessible and collective. Hallways are the only space in which it is possible for an organization to learn. Hallways require organizational members to interact with each other, exchanging their data, conclusions, reasoning and questions with others, rather than listening to speeches or presentations. Collective learning is more effective when organizational members talk with each other as equals rather than as disparate members of a hierarchy. There are four critical data elements in hallways: the availability of organizational data; the primary source of the data being present; publishing the data, and the dialogue that constructs meaning from the data. These four elements highlight the difference between hallways and a more traditional organizational communication process in which learning is sometimes equated with sharing, or making public, organizational information.
