Approaches for Organizational Learning: A Literature Review

Abstract

Organizational learning (OL) enables organizations to transform individual knowledge into organizational knowledge. Organizations struggle to implement practical approaches due to the lack of concrete prescriptions. We performed a literature review to identify OL approaches and linked these approaches to OL theories. We synthesized 18 OL approaches across three domains: people (seven approaches), processes (nine), and technologies (two). Furthermore, we suggest two directions for future research: referring to the evaluation of our results and addressing the contingencies of OL effectiveness. Our mapping guides organizations in the design of learning processes to improve long-term performance. Although relying on a single approach is unlikely to comprehensively enable OL, our mapping facilitates the combination of several approaches aligned with organizational culture and processes.