Multilevel Network Measures for Organizational Learning Process

Abstract

Organizational learning has received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners alike for the past five decades. Yet the lack of agreement among scholars for an accepted theory or methodology for measuring organizational learning still persists. Most of the organizational learning research has focused on declarative (know-what) and procedural (know-how) aspect of knowledge with little emphasis on the relationships among people in an organization that shapes organizational learning. The need for a multilevel perspective, though widely recognized has not yet resulted in significant contributions in the field. To address these concerns and gaps in the literature, adopted a process-based view of organizational learning consisting of four distinct subprocesses - information acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation and organizational memory. This study advances the measurement of organizational learning process using social network analysis and develops measures of organizational learning subprocesses that are multilevel and are able to provide a snapshot of the current process of organizational learning within the organization. Network measures of organizational learning within firms and between firms were compared to deepen understanding of learning processes across hierarchical levels in an organization. This study using a multi-theoretical, multilevel perspective to examine organizational learning networks has important implications for methodological advances and managerial practices. Limitations are addressed, and future research directions are suggested.