In this opening chapter we have offered a general mapping of the field covered by the Handbook, and have also tried to demonstrate some of the inter-linkages over time and between parallel, but independent, areas of development. It has also been possible to identify some significant influences, which predate the invention of the concepts of organizational learning and knowledge management, and which might be seen as providing a common heritage, or similar watersheds.
It should be clear by now that the different sub-areas of the field are at different stages of maturity. Some of them are major rivers which have flowed gently for a long time; some are shorter streams which flow very quickly; and others are sudden torrents which emerge almost overnight—and which could disappear again equally quickly.
Several of the chapters from the first edition are now well on the way to becoming foundational works because they provide clear maps and overviews of their areas and have provided authoritative agendas for future research. As a whole, the first edition offers a major statement of the state of the field in the ‘noughties’—at the start of the twenty-first century; this second edition builds on the foundational work and attempts to encapsulate the rapid development and the growing importance of the field as we enter the ‘teens.’
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1Even though James March uses the term ‘learning organization’ in March (1988), it is without the normative implications subsequently associated with the term following the work of Senge (1990).