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 theory, and that the point of departure for learning is the lived and living experience of everyday life. All social learning theory departs from an understanding of learning as participation in social processes emphasizing both issues of knowing and issues of being and becoming. This means that social learning theory encompasses both the epistemology and the ontology of learning. Thus, social learning theory considers both the issue of human existence, development, and socialization (ontology) and the issue of people coming to know about themselves and what it means to be part of the world (epistemology). In social learning theory, socialization and learning are, in other words, inseparable processes; and they constitute each other in an understanding of learning as participation in social processes.
The overall governing question for this review is: How does social learning theory contribute to an understanding of organizational learning? And what does it add to an understanding of organizational learning that cannot be included in a deviation of individual learning theory? A lot of the literature on organizational learning and its counterpart, the Learning Organization, is founded in individual learning theory, and social learning theory in the organizational learning literature has grown out of a criticism of that (see e.g. Elkjaer, 2004 and the references mentioned in note 1). The criticism is elaborated later, but, in short, it is that individual learning theory focuses on learning as inner mental processes related to the acquisition and processing of information and knowledge. It leads to mind being the locus of learning and, as a consequence, a separation of body and mind; emotion and cognition as well as learner and context. This, in turn, means that the focus for learning is on how learners become knowledgeable in a purely cognitive sense, and not on how a context for learning (e.g. an enterprise) is key both to learning and to the development of identity and socialization. Individual learning theory is, in other words, criticized for neglecting the ontological dimension of learning, coming to be, and only focusing on the epistemological dimension, getting to know.
Having said that, it may be argued that social learning theory in organizational learning literature is not fully explicit about how to conceptually bind the two dimensions of learning (ontology and epistemology) together. This is the background for introducing John Dewey’s concepts of experience and inquiry in this review (Dewey, 1933 [1986], 1938 [1986]). Dewey’s concept of experience is not to be confused with the concept of experience found in humanistic and individual-oriented psychology in which experiencing is viewed as intrinsically psychical, mental, and private processes. Dewey’s notion of experience is a non-dualist concept covering the individual and the world, and experience is always culturally mediated (Bernstein, 1960; Dewey, 1917 [1980]; Miettinen, 2000). Likewise, Dewey’s concept of inquiry is not to be confused with plain communication skills (Senge et al., 1999), but to be related to the overall creation of individual and collective, cultural and historical knowledge. We return to Dewey’s concepts of experience and inquiry as notions that hold potential for bridging conceptual gaps in coining a social learning theory for organizational learning.
A word about method for making this review is needed. The review consisted of four successive steps: First, we started out by searching for the term ‘organizational learning’ on the Web of Science database and the SwetsWise database with the search criteria set to ‘topic’ and ‘title.’ Secondly, we refined the results from the initial search by only including articles from the fifteen highest ranked journals measured by number of articles on the search term ‘organizational learning.’ Thirdly, from a surface reading of the abstract we selected the pool of potential articles that claimed to rest upon social learning theory, and which were critical of individual learning theory. Fourthly, we did an in-depth reading of the selected articles deciding which articles were of relevance and which were not.1
The way of reading the texts was inspired by a phenomenological approach (Giorgi, 1975). This means bracketing any theoretical knowledge the reader/interpreter may have in order to read the text as a text, that is as a phenomenon of words put together in order to give meaning. After this the interpreters apply their own theoretical framework or structure in order to give the texts new meaning according to the purpose of the phenomenological reading. In this case, the purpose was to explore the contribution of social learning theory to the field of organizational learning. Social learning theory, however, builds upon a critique of individual learning theory, which means that we find it helpful to introduce the two learning theories along the same structure.
Jean Lave’s pioneering work on coining the essence of learning as the telos of learning, the learning mechanism, and the subject-world relation has served as an important source of inspiration for creating a structure for this review (Lave, 1997). In our adoption of Lave’s notions of learning they have become the content of organizational learning, the process of organizational learning, and the relation between the individual and the organization. In other words, what do proponents of individual and social learning theory regard as the content of organizational learning; how is organizational learning to come about; and how is the relation between the individual and the organization understood and conceptualized? Lave’s model for understanding learning does not explicitly include an organizational concept although it can be read into the subject–world relation. We have, nevertheless, chosen to add an organizational component in order to include the notion of organization that resides in the different organizational learning perspectives.
The flow in the chapter is that organizational learning based upon individual learning theory is introduced shortly followed by an introduction of social learning theory in organizational learning literature. Then follows a section, ‘inspiration from pragmatism,’ in which the above-mentioned Deweyan concepts of experience and inquiry are introduced as a way to conceptually bridge the gap between the ontological and the epistemological dimension of learning. Finally, in the ‘conclusion and discussion,’ implications for organizational learning of a social learning theory are suggested.