Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Introduction

Many reviews have, over the years, been made to create an overview of literature on organizational learning (Babuji and Crossan, 2004; Dodgson, 1993; Easterby-Smith, 1997; Fenwick, 2008; Fiol and Lyles, 1985; Huber, 1991; Levitt and March, 1988; Miner and Mezias, 1996; Rashman, Withers, and Hartley, 2009; Shrivastava, 1983). The amount of reviews led to the following remark: ‘there appear to be more reviews of organizational learning than there is substance to review’ (Weick and Roberts, 1996 [1993]: 440). This statement should, however, be modified today because of an increase in published empirical papers on organizational learning, which indicates a certain maturation of the research field of organizational learning (Babuji and Crossan, 2004: 401). This chapter is, nevertheless, yet another review of literature on organizational learning. Further, it is a review that primarily is focused on literature on organizational learning in which the understanding of learning is based on social learning theory. Social learning theory in organizational learning literature has been coined under several names such as: ‘situated learning’ (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Richter, 1998); ‘practice-based learning’ (Gherardi, 2000); ‘actor-network theory’ (Fox, 2000); ‘cultural-historical activity theory’ (Engeström, 2001); and ‘learning as cultural processes’ (Cook and Yanow, 1993; Yanow, 2000).

We prefer the term ‘social learning theory’ to indicate that we are in the realm of social ...