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Information, Management, Learning organizations, Organizational learning
Many writers on management during the 1990s have stated that we have neither a good understanding of the process of organizational learning nor a good grasp of the concept of knowledge management. In his 1990 book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge quoted others in asserting that "The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called the learning organization and the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable means of achieving competitive advantage". More recently, writers such as Drucker, Davenport, Prusak, and Stewart have made similar claims when describing the drivers for managing corporate knowledge. This paper briefly looks at the overlaps and synergies between these concepts. It is argued that the discipline of knowledge management at a corporate level and the phenomenon of the learning organization are inextricably linked and should always be analysed and discussed in concert.
Introduction
The accumulation of knowledge and its association with the learning process has intrigued mankind for centuries (Ives et al., 1998; Blumentritt and Johnston, 1999). Despite considerable philosophical and academic discussion since the time of Plato, organizations still seem to be unclear as to how the concept of organizational learning can improve organizational performance and long-term business viability. Despite the confusion, the level of acceptance of the criticality of organizational learning to business survival has increased significantly during the 1990s (Senge, 1990; Malhotra, 1996; Manasco, 1998; Sandelands, 1999). At the same time, knowledge management is also purported to be essential to sustained competitive advantage and continued business success (Drucker, 1998; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Fusaro, 1998; Stewart, 1998). Pressure is mounting on all types of organizations to learn faster and to manage their knowledge better.
It is widely accepted that firms which consciously invest in the creation of new knowledge through research and development activities or through more informal learning processes tend to do better than those that ride on the coat-tails of knowledge created by others (Boisot, 1998). This highlights the importance of the creation of new knowledge as a critical component of an organization's ability to learn and adapt. This will be developed further in this paper as a focal point for analysis of the synergies between the learning organization...