Organizational Learning: A Socio-Cognitive Framework

TLDR

Organizational learning is a popular topic attracting researchers across fields, yet few studies integrate social cognition into its scholarship. This investigation examines organizational learning from the perspective of social cognition. The study proposes that organizational learning results from reciprocal interactions among information acquisition, dissemination, implementation, sensemaking, memory, thinking, unlearning, intelligence, improvisation, and emotions, all linked by organizational culture, showing that social cognition better explains the learning process. The study discusses implications of social cognition for organizational learning.

Abstract

Organizational learning is a popular topic in business and academia and attracts many researchers and practitioners from different fields. Even though organizational learning scholarship is still growing, there are few studies that cross-fertilize social cognition and organizational learning. This investigation examines organizational learning from the perspective of social cognition. It is argued that social cognition explains the organizational learning process better by integrating fragmented studies on the processes of learning, and the study proposes that organizational learning is an outcome of reciprocal interactions of the processes of information/knowledge acquisition, information/knowledge dissemination, information/knowledge implementation, sensemaking, memory, thinking, unlearning, intelligence, improvisation, and emotions - connected by organizational culture. In addition, the implications of social cognition on organizational learning are discussed.