Organizational Learning

Abstract

The idea of organizational learning can be traced to a seminal book titled ‘The Behavioral Theory of the Firm’. In contrast to rational conceptions of organizations as entities solving maximization problems, this behavioral view depicts organizational learning as a function of experience and an organization’s success and failure in meeting performance targets. In the decades since, the topic of organization learning has generated volumes of subsequent work spanning disciplines, levels of analysis, and theoretical perspectives. It is not possible to review the entire field in this entry. Instead, I focus on theoretical models on organizational learning which have built on the original 'The Behavioral Theory of the Firm'.