Learning by Doing What? A Critical Analysis of Organizational Learning-by-Doing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Glenn Dutcher ◽  
Cortney Stephen Rodet
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Learning By Doing

scholarly journals Knowledge acquisition throughout the lifecycle: product and industry learning frameworks

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferran Vendrell-Herrero ◽  
Emanuel Gomes ◽  
Marco Opazo-Basaez ◽  
Oscar F. Bustinza
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Theoretical Problem ◽  
Digital Innovation ◽  
Dominant Type ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Learning Frameworks ◽  
Insight Into

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to distinguish clearly between industry (ILC) and product lifecycle (PLC) models and to elucidate their different ramifications for organizational learning and knowledge. Design/methodology/approach The authors examine existing knowledge on ILCs and PLCs to highlight the differences and similarities and develop a framework with implications for learning and innovation in digital manufacturing industries. Findings The authors identify and associate one dominant type of learning with each phase of the ILC: learning-by-participating in the introduction phase, learning-by-feedback in the growth phase, vicarious learning in the maturity phase and learning-by-memory in the decline phase. The study also provides insight into how different types of learning influence PLC in digital innovation. From this perspective, learning-by-feedback is crucial to co-creation, co-production and open innovation. Similarly, learning-by-doing and learning-by-memory are essential to production and usage stages, respectively. Research limitations/implications The conceptual development in this paper follows a somewhat critical but ultimately elucidative analysis that highlights important research avenues in the interplay of PLC/ILC, organizational learning and digital innovation. Originality/value This paper clarifies a perennial theoretical problem by differentiating two concepts often conflated in the literature. More importantly, it contributes to the knowledge management literature by shedding light on the connection of ILC and PLC theories to different types of organizational learning.

scholarly journals Self-Confirming Biased Beliefs in Organizational “Learning by Doing”

Complexity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Sanghyun Park ◽  
Phanish Puranam
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Formal Definition ◽  
Adaptive Behaviours

Learning by doing, a change in beliefs (and consequently behaviour) due to experience, is crucial to the adaptive behaviours of organizations as well as the individuals that inhabit them. In this review paper, we summarise different pathologies of learning noted in past literature using a common underlying mechanism based on self-confirming biased beliefs. These are inaccurate beliefs about the environment that are self-confirming because acting upon these beliefs prevents their falsification. We provide a formal definition for self-confirming biased beliefs as an attractor that can lock learning by doing systems into suboptimal actions and provide illustrations based on simulations. We then compare and distinguish self-confirming biased beliefs from other related theoretical constructs, including confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecies, and sticking points, and underscore that self-confirming biased beliefs underlie inefficient self-confirming equilibria and hot-stove effects. Lastly, we highlight two fundamental ways to escape self-confirming biased beliefs: taking actions inconsistent with beliefs (i.e., exploration) and getting information on unchosen actions (i.e., counterfactuals).

scholarly journals Inter-organizational design fit in inter-organizational knowledge management

Sociologija ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Aleksic-Miric
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Organizational Design ◽  
Organizational Knowledge ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Strategic Objectives

The purpose of this paper is to analyze existing knowledge on how organizations learn using multilevel comparison perspective of intra- and inter-organizational learning and to offer deeper understanding of the role that organizational design properties have in inter-organizational learning. Using Argote and Ophir (2005) findings on similarity vs complementarity fit developed for intra-organizational learning as an anchor, we analyze the role similarity vs complementarity fit of organizational configuration and coordination properties in inter-organizational settings. Our intention is to explicitly express the role of interorganizational design fit in inter-organizational knowledge management. Framework developed here systematizes and explains how strategic objectives of network creation (exploration or exploitation) should be aligned with learning mechanisms (learning by doing or learning by listening/observing) and organizational design properties. From the point of organization theory, this paper advances knowledge about the influence organizational design as intra-organizational property has on knowledge transfer between organizations and inter-organizational learning. Our framework helps managers understand how inter-organizational design fit can influence inter-organizational learning within the network. With regard to policy making, knowledge networks are becoming increasingly important as a mechanism of industrial development support, economic growth, increase of employment and poverty reduction and this paper points to mechanisms of inter-organizational design that can be used in managing these networks.

Emancipatory potential of action learning:a critical analysis

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 619-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara J. Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Action Learning ◽  
Organizational Practices ◽  
Critical Studies

Action learning (AL) methods are popular technologies in programs of organizational learning (OL). However, from the perspective of critical studies, they are instrumentalist, managerialist, exclusive in design, decontextualized and apolitical. A critical analysis of the oppressive potential of AL is presented along these dimensions. To realize better AL's emancipatory potential, four enhancements are suggested: focus AL purpose more on workers’ interests; confront organizational practices that unjustly marginalize or privilege different people; acknowledge the complexity, context and contested nature of learning; and facilitate AL using democratic “power with”, not “power over”, approaches to working with people towards emancipatory change.

LEARNING BY DOING SOMETHING ELSE: THE IMPACT OF TASK VARIATION ON ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING CURVES.

2000 ◽  
Vol 2000 (1) ◽  
pp. E1-E6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa A. Schilling ◽  
Alexandre Marangoni ◽  
Patricia Vidal ◽  
Mahesh Rajan
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Learning Curves ◽  
Task Variation ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals The Relationship between Unit Cost and Cumulative Quantity and the Evidence for Organizational Learning-by-Doing

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Learning Curve ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Unit Cost ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Firm Strategy ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Empirical Regularities ◽  
The Relationship

The concept of a learning curve for individuals has been around since the beginning of the twentieth century. The idea that an analogous phenomenon might also apply at the level of the organization took longer to emerge, but it had begun to figure prominently in military procurement and scheduling at least a decade before Wright's (1936) classic paper providing evidence that the cost of producing an airframe declined as cumulative output increased. Wright (1936) was careful not to describe his empirical results as a learning curve. Of his three proposed three explanations for the relationships he observed between cost and cumulative quantity produced, only one is unambiguously a source of organizational learning; the others are consistent with organizational learning but also with standard static economies of scale. It quickly became apparent that the notion of organizational learning as a by-product of accumulated experience has important consequences for firm strategy. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) built its consulting business around the concept of what it branded the experience curve, asserting that cost reductions associated with cumulative output applied to all costs, were “consistently around 20—30% each time accumulated production is doubled, [and] this decline goes on in time without limit” (Henderson 1968). Today, the negative relationship between unit production costs and cumulative output is one of the best-documented empirical regularities in economics. Nonetheless, the thesis of this paper is that the conceptual transformation of the relationship between cost and cumulative production into an organizational learning curve with profound strategic implications has not been sufficiently supported with direct empirical evidence.

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