Journal of Management Inquiry

http://jmi.sagepub.com Reflections on Two Views of Managing Learning and Knowledge in Organizations

Linda Argote Journal of Management Inquiry 2005; 14; 43 DOI: 10.1177/1056492604273179 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jmi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/43

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JOURNAL 10.1177/1056492604273179 MANAGEMENT / Argote KNOWLEDGE March / 2005 LEARNING OF INQUIRY AND

EDITORS CHOICE

Reflections on Two Views of Managing Learning and Knowledge in Organizations

LINDA ARGOTE Carnegie Mellon University
The commentary reflects on two essays on managing learning and knowledge in organizations. The essay on organizational learning was written by Friedman, Lipshitz, and Popper; the essay on knowledge management was written by Hazlett, McAdam, and Gallagher. Key points in the two essays are highlighted and points of convergence discussed. Opportunities for future work on organizational learning and knowledge management are identified. Keywords: organizational learning; knowledge management

he topics of organizational learning and knowledge management have received considerable attention recently by researchers and practitioners. Although the topics have much in common, their focus is somewhat different. Organizational learning focuses more on the processes through which organizations acquire knowledge from experience, whereas knowledge management focuses more on managing what is learned. Essays by Friedman, Lipshitz, and Popper, and Hazlett, McAdam, and Gallager in this issue of the Journal of Management Inquiry address these important topics and characterize the state of the respective fields. In my comments, I highlight key points in their essays, identify points of commonality, and suggest opportunities for future work on organizational learning and knowledge management.

In The Mystification of Organizational Learning: An Essay, Friedman, Lipshitz, and Popper argue that although organizational learning has emerged as a fundamental concept in organizational theory, the concept of organizational learning has been mystified, to its detriment. The article analyzes forces contributing to the mystification of organizational learning and suggests strategies for demystifying the concept. Five factors are identified as contributing to the mystification of organizational learning. The first is the lack of consensus about what is meant by organizational learning. The second is the overly simplistic extension of models of individual-level learning to organizational-level learning, without addressing how the learning of individuals becomes organizational. As the authors note, for learning to become organizational, structures and routines that enable

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organizational members to collect, analyze, store, and transfer information must exist. The third factor contributing to the mystification of organizational learning is the split between skeptics, who emphasize the difficulties organizations face in learning, and visionaries who promote the learning organization as a utopian ideal. The visionary-skeptic dichotomy can contribute to mystification because it focuses on extremes rather than on more moderate and realistic treatments that identify both the barriers to and facilitators of organizational learning. The fourth factor contributing to mystification is reifying organizational learning concepts, such as double-loop learning or the learning organization, and applying them superficially to problems rather than using them as rigorous conceptual tools. The fifth factor is the framing of organizational learning as a spiritual quest. Friedman, Lipshitz, and Popper convincingly argue that we need to demystify organizational learning and suggest strategies for demystification. The first strategy is to identify a nonanthropomorphic analog to an individuals central nervous system that distinguishes individual and organizational learning. One such analog that the authors suggest is an observable organizational learning mechanism, such as an after-action review, through which organization members interact to learn. A second strategy is to conduct studies that focus on theoretical integration rather than on generating new typologies. The third strategy is to take a multidisciplinary approach to organizational learning. The fourth approach that the authors advocate is to subordinate theoretical concerns to the concerns of practitioners who wish to promote learning within real organizational contexts. Friedman, Lipshitz, and Poppers argument that the concept of organizational learning should be demystified is timely and compelling. To make research progress or to develop specific guidelines for practice, we need to move from mystical to testable domains. We also need, as the authors argue, to identify mechanisms through which organizationalas opposed to individuallearning occurs. One litmus test for determining whether organizational learning has occurred is analyzing whether organizational knowledge persists in the face of individual turnover (Argote, 1999). I also strongly agree that we do not need more typologies of organizational learning but rather need more theory and, I would add, more solid empirical evidence about this important phenomenon (Miner & Mezias, 1996). The suggestion that I question is the wisdom of subordinating theoretical concerns to

the concerns of practitioners who wish to promote learning in their firms. As Kurt Lewin stated so crisply, there is nothing so practical as a good theory (Lewin, 1951, p. 169). A greater understanding of how we go from theory to practice and from practice to general principles is needed. Friedman, Lipshitz, and Popper advocate taking a multidisciplinary approach to organizational learning and review several approaches. Their article provides a deeper description of clinical approaches to organizational learning that focus on bringing about change than social psychological approaches that analyze information sharing in groups (Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997; Larsen, Christenson, Abbott, & Franz, 1996) or behavioral approaches that emphasize the embedding of knowledge in supraindividual routines (Cohen & Bacdayan, 1994; Levitt & March, 1988; March, Schulz, & Zhou, 2000; Nelson & Winter, 1982). These social psychological and routine-based approaches complement the clinical approach and enrich our understanding of organizational learning. Another variant of the skeptic-visionary dichotomy is the split between researchers who emphasize how hard it is to learn from experience (see Schulz, 2002, for a review) and those who document the performance improvements that typically occur in organizations as they gain experience. Working in the latter tradition, Dutton and Thomas (1984) reviewed the learning curves from more than 100 production programs. With one exception, the performance of all of the production programs improved with experience. There was remarkable variation, however, in the rate at which organizations learned from experience: Some showed remarkable improvement whereas others evidenced slow rates of learning (Argote & Epple, 1990; Pisano, Bohmer, & Edmondson, 2001). Understanding factors behind this variation and how to design experience to promote learning (Haunschild & Sullivan, 2002) is an exciting research area. This work is consistent with the more moderate approach Friedman, Lipshitz, and Popper advocate. It shifts the conversation from a debate about whether organizations learn to an analysis of the conditions under which learning occurs. Organizations can learn not only from their own direct experience, but also from the experience of other organizations. Levitt and March (1988) made this important observation in a theoretical article (see also Huber, 1991). Several empirical studies have found empirical support for the proposition (Baum & Ingram, 1998; Darr, Argote, & Epple, 1995; Ingram &

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Simons, 2002). Understanding how and when organizations learn from other organizations is an important issue worthy of further research (see Ingram, 2002, for a review of interorganizational learning). Just as there are diverse approaches to organizational learning, there are diverse approaches to knowledge management. Hazlett, McAdam, and Gallagher analyze the major schools of thought about knowledge management. The researchers convincingly argue that such an analysis is helpful in understanding the field of knowledge management, identifying promising research directions, and providing a foundation for successful practice. Knowledge management paradigms are analyzed according to Kuhns model of discipline development. According to Kuhn, a paradigm represents a belief system that encompasses concepts, models, assumptions, and principles that are shared within a community. Furthermore, Kuhn sees a discipline as moving from a state of prescience to single-paradigm or (more rarely) multiparadigm normal science, punctuated by scientific revolutions in which the underlying paradigm is changed. Two main paradigms of knowledge management are identified: the computational paradigm and the organic paradigm. The computational view of knowledge management approaches knowledge as identifying empirically validated facts and managing them through technology. By contrast, the organic paradigm includes the people, group dynamics, social network, and cultural aspects of knowledge management and includes tacit as well as explicit knowledge. Thus, the organic paradigm is more encompassing than the computational. Returning to the Kuhn framework, the authors argue that in its current form, knowledge management is in a state of prescience, marked by frequent and heated debates about methods, problems, and standards of evidence. Hazlett, McAdam, and Gallagher suggest that both the computational and the organic paradigm could coexist in the area of knowledge management. An interesting challenge for knowledge management is its multidimensional nature. For example, knowledge management can be subdivided into creating or developing new knowledge, retaining the knowledge, and transferring knowledge (Argote, McEvily, & Reagans, 2003). Factors that facilitate one dimension of knowledge management can detract from others. For example, personnel rotation is generally good for creating knowledge (Gruenfeld,

Matorana, & Fan, 2000) and for transferring it (Almeida & Kogut, 1999) but bad for retaining it (Moreland, Argote, & Krishnan, 1996). Similarly, diversity facilitates knowledge creation (Lant, Milliken, & Batra, 1992; Williams & OReilly, 1998) but hinders knowledge transfer (Baum & Berta, 1999; Darr & Kurtzberg, 2000). How organizations manage the tensions and tradeoffs in knowledge management is an important issue that would benefit from research (Argote & Ophir, 2002). Another challenge in the field of knowledge management is how to manage knowledge for competitive advantage. On one hand, knowledge transfer within the firm is positive: It usually improves organizational performance. On the other, knowledge transfer or spillover to other organizations is generally not desirable: Firms want to block competitors from benefiting from their knowledge. Some of the steps one takes to facilitate internal knowledge transfer, such as embedding knowledge in technology, can also facilitate external knowledge transfer. For example, Mansfield (1985) found that knowledge embedded in technology leaked out very rapidly to competitors. Thus, how organizations manage knowledge to facilitate internalbut not externalknowledge transfer is a fundamental issue for firms. There has been some theory on the issue (Argote & Ingram, 2000; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997) but little empirical analysis. More attention to this important issue would advance the field of knowledge management. A particular challenge for this research to address is how current business trends such as increased off shoring and more frequent interorganizational relationships, such as joint ventures and alliances (Powell, Koput, & Smith-Doerr, 1996), affect how knowledge should be managed for competitive advantage. These new forms of organizing can lead to more complicated relationships and more nuanced connotations of what it means to be inside or outside an organization. A common theme that emerged across the two essays on organizational learning and knowledge management is the multidisciplinary nature of both topics. The real organizational problems of organizational learning and knowledge management do not fall neatly into one discipline but rather involve aspects of many, including psychology, sociology, operations management, organizational behavior, strategic management, economics, and information systems. Thus understanding organizational learning and knowledge management requires a multidisciplinary approach.

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In my view, the multidisciplinary approach is a strength of the fields. But it can also be a weakness that impedes the culmination of findings because researchers mean different things by the terms. I do not believe that we need to converge on one approach for each topic, but we do need to cumulate findings within each approach so that our understanding of the phenomena advances. Thus, it is important to be precise about the assumptions and methods used within each approach. As findings accumulate in the various approaches, we will gain an understanding of their strengths and limits and what each has to offer. We have seen successful accumulation in some subareas of organizational learning and knowledge management. For example, the subarea of transactive memory is one area where knowledge has cumulated. The concept of transactive memory or knowledge of who knows what was developed by Wegner (1986) to apply to dyads in close relationships (see also Hollingshead, 1998). The concept was initially extended to small laboratory groups (Liang, Moreland, & Argote, 1995) and then to groups in the field such as software development or consulting teams (Austin, 2003; Faraj & Sproull, 2000; Lewis, 2003). Initial work focused on examining whether groups with well-developed transactive memories where members know who knows what and who is good at what perform better than groups lacking transactive knowledge. More recent work focuses on understanding how transactive memory systems develop and the boundary conditions for the positive effect observed between transactive memory and performance. Other areas where research has accumulated include information sharing with groups (Thomas-Hunt, Ogden, & Neale, 2003; Wittenbaum & Stasser, 1996), knowledge transfer across organizational units (Baum & Ingram, 1998; Darr et al. 1995; Ingram & Simons, 2002) and social networks and knowledge transfer (Borgatti & Cross, 2003; Hansen, 1999; Reagans & McEvily, 2003), and the effect of personnel movement on knowledge transfer (Almeida & Kogut, 1999; Kane, Argote, & Levine, 2005). By accumulating knowledge within subareas and aggregating across sub areas, we arrive at a deeper and more satisfying understanding of organizational learning and knowledge management. We would also arrive at a more satisfying understanding of organizational learning and knowledge management if research on one topic informed the other more closely. For example, if we had a deeper understanding of the processes through which orga-

nizations learn, we could design better knowledge management systems to capture and transfer knowledge acquired through that learning. Furthermore, more effective knowledge management could enhance organizational learning. Thus, a greater understanding of organizational learning would enable us to be more effective at knowledge management, and better knowledge management could facilitate organizational learning. REFERENCES
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LINDA ARGOTE (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is the David M. and Barbara A. Kirr professor of organizational behavior in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research and teachings focus on organizational learning, productivity, knowledge transfer, and group processes and performance. She is particularly interested in how groups and organizations acquire, retain, and transfer knowledge. Journals in which her research has appeared include Administrative Science Quarterly, International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Management Science, Operations Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organization

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agement, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Organization Science. She has also served as chair of INFORMS College on Organizations, on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management, and as departmental editor of Management Sciences Department of Organizational Performance, Strategy, and Design. She is currently editor-in-chief of Organization Science.

Science, and Science. Her book, Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining and Transferring Knowledge was a finalist for the Terry Book Award of the Academy of Management. She has served or is currently serving on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Group Dynamics, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Engineering and Technology Man-

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