Guest editorial: Part two: perspectives on sustainable learning and organizing

1. Perspectives on sustainable learning and organizing

This issue provides an in-depth understanding of opportunities for sustainable learning and organizational strategies, with a particular focus on public organizations, to help them address their challenges. Organizations today play a central role in the quest for sustainable development and the focus of sustainable learning and organizing is of vital importance. Referring to United Nations (2021), an organization needs to learn how to be sustainable in many perspectives or dimensions. However, it is a complex and huge challenge for the organizations constantly confronted to obtain new knowledge, demanding the learning of new practices and expertise to make informed decisions not knowing the outcomes in advance. Moreover, it is a challenge obtaining new information, adapting new strategies and a readiness to leave behind old ways of organizing and working. And, not to forget, to manage crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, and the technology-embeddedness are of vital importance.

Digital technology essentially changes the way organizations operate, often seen as a disruptive driver of change and learning. Digital transformation including artificial intelligence and technology implementation poses challenges for human empowerment and judgment and calls for new perspectives and logics of organizing and learning involving the understanding of revolutionary as well as continuous changes in operations that affect the whole organization (Shahlaei & Lundh Snis, 2022; Svensson, Bergkvist, Bäccman, & Durst, 2021; Vallo Hult & Byström, 2022). Moreover, it put forward changes of work organizations, competences and roles, as it typically will challenge established routines and relations between actors within organizations and forming new practices in public organizations (Bednar & Welch, 2020; Bernhard & Wihlborg, 2022; Drechsler, Gregory, Wagner, & Tumbas, 2020; Kallinikos, Aaltonen, & Marton, 2013; Lyytinen, Yoo, & Boland, 2016). Then, to stabilize new practices, the organizational learning and management agency is crucial (Barley, 2020).

When working with these complex concerns, there is a need to embrace multiple perspectives such as managing competences based on inclusion of workforce, trust, transparency, regular employee development, collaboration and encouragement for constant new organizational initiatives and experimentation (Battistella, Cicero, & Preghenella, 2021; Bernhard & Olsson, 2020; Bernhard & Wihlborg, 2022).

Learning as a concept is generally connected to values and valuations, and the understanding of learning is dependent on what theoretical perspective that is...