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Abstract Organizational learning and organizational knowledge have seen important growth in both the academic and business worlds. However, both approaches face various problems, the most striking of which is their theoretical confusion and diversity. This is due to the great number of authors and publications on the theoretical concepts, which originate in different fields, and are dealt with from different perspectives. Despite their implicit links, the two areas of literature retain a relative distance. This article sets out to improve the situation by linking the two perspectives with the aim of providing an integrative approach. Furthermore, the analysis outlines some common unresolved issues in these debates: the epistemological and ontological principles that underpin our understanding of learning, knowledge, and the relationship between them, as well as the relationship between individual and organizational learning and knowing. Key Words: knowledge; learning; organizational knowledge; organizational knowledge perspectives; organizational learning; organizational learning perspectives
The concept of organizational learning has experienced important growth over recent years, in both the academic and business worlds. Among the reasons behind this growth (Dodgson, 1993; Easterby-Smith et al., 1998), the new characteristics of the business world, together with the extensive analytical value of organizational learning in contributing to the improvement of the understanding of organizations and their activities, are both of great significance. However, organizational learning is currently facing a series of problems such as theoretical confusion and disorder (Easterby-Smith and Araujo, 1999), probably because it is a natural part of the maturation process in a dynamic intellectual field (Antal et al., 2001). Consequently, as these authors state (p. 191), it is symptomatic of the dynamics of the field that the one element on which there is no agreement is the definition of organizational learning itself.
Similarly, studies on organizational knowledge have taken on greater importance in management literature. Teece (1998: 76) considers knowledge and intangible assets to be key factors in achieving competitive advantages in developed countries, which is due to the rapid expansion of the product and factors markets. Brown and Duguid (1998: 90) however, go as far as to say that it is knowledge, and not transactional costs, that keeps an organization together, which implies that organizational knowledge provides the organization with a synergetic advantage impossible to achieve in the...