Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Introduction

Organizational learning and knowledge transfer are central to the performance and prosperity of organizations. Organizational learning is a process through which organizations interpret their experience, which can enable them to improve their performance and adapt to their environments. Organizations that are able to learn and transfer the resultant knowledge throughout their establishments are more successful than organizations that are less adept at organizational learning and knowledge transfer (Argote and Ingram, 2000; Teece, Pisano, and Shuen, 1997).

New organizational forms that involve geographic distribution of organizational units pose challenges to organizational learning and knowledge transfer. Over the past few decades there has been a growing fragmentation and internationalization of firms’ productive activities (Feenstra, 1998; Gereffi, Humphrey, and Sturgeon, 2005). We discuss the fragmentation and internationalization trends separately.

A number of changes over the past three decades have led to the increased fragmentation and, thereby, distribution of productive activity. Continued improvements in an ever-growing variety of electronic-based communication (such as email and video conferencing) and coordination media (including online collaborative tools such as Google documents) are increasing the viability of distributing teams across geographic distance and firm boundaries. In addition, advances in information technology (IT), such as enterprise resource ...