2006 The Organizing Society - Sub Themes

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Organizational learning is an important topic of research and practice and is a key feature of the Organizing Society. The relationship between learning and organizing remains a significantly under-developed aspect in organizational learning research. The study of organizational learning needs to advance by recognizing the value of viewing and researching learning and organizing as micro level processes within organizations. The study of learning needs to be enhanced by a greater focus on the social character of learning processes and on the interactions of multiple processes and levels. One possible way to achieve these goals is to pay more attention to the micro-practices, processes and routines underlying learning, and their evolution over time.  Different ways to approach the micro processes and practices of learning could open up new ways to think about established phenomena like learning, organizing and their relationship.

Adopting a micro-foundations based, practice-oriented perspective would allow us to advance our understanding of social complexity in the context of evolving organizational learning. The dynamics underpinning the way learning is organized in the context of socio-political relations broadens the scope of understanding organizing not only as the institutionalization of practices but also as a reflection of the self-organizing nature of learning routines, processes and practices. Organizing in a manner that is more appropriate for engaging with social complexity, involves addressing all these elements in a resourcing cycle where actions in relation to routines, processes and practices emerge as collective resources for ways of dealing with particular problems and tasks that the organization is confronted with.

These issues raise a number of methodological implications for future research in organizational learning, particularly in relation to capturing and representing the social complexity underpinning organizational learning. We therefore, see the focus of this sub-theme as paving the way for future research directions in Organizational Learning.

We are interested in conceptual and empirical papers which rigorously engage with new and emerging approaches of Organizational Learning that:

•  Make the case for the importance of studying the micro-foundations of organizing.

• Provide more actionable consequences to organizational learning research by concentrating on processes, practices and routines.

•  Help explain the emergence of organisational learning, thus addressing issues about the ontological and epistemological status of learning.

• Outline some practical research considerations about how to study practices, processes and routines as organizational resources.

•  Help understand how routines develop and change.

•  Help explain how routines and practices are transferred to new contexts.

•  Contribute to understanding the relationship between routines and dynamic capabilities.

Abstracts of 800 words should be submitted by 31st January,2006 following the electronic submission guidelines

 About the convenors:

 1. Elena Antonacopoulou, is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the University of Liverpool Management School and Director of GNOSIS, a dynamic management research initiative. She is currently, Senior Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. Her principal research interests include change and learning processes in organizations. She is currently undertaking a series of research projects in Organizational Learning, Social Practice and Dynamic Capabilities and is focusing on the development of new methodologies for studying social complexity in organizations. She writes on all the above areas and her work is published in international journals such as Organisation Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Review. She is currently subject Editor for Organizational Learning and Knowledge for the Emergence: Complexity and Organizational Journal and has just completed a five year term as joint Editor-in-chief of the international journal  Management Learning. She serves on the editorial board of Organization Science, Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal and Society, Business and Organization Journal. She has served in numerous positions at Board and Executive levels at the Academy of Management (USA) and currently serves for a second term on the Board of the European Group in Organisation Studies (EGOS). www.gnosisresearch.org

2. Linda Argote (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is the David M. and Barbara A. Kirr Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.  Linda’s research and teaching focus on organizational learning, productivity, knowledge transfer, and group processes and performance.  She is particularly interested in how groups and organizations acquire, retain, and transfer knowledge.  Journals in which her research has appeared include Administrative Science Quarterly, International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Management Science, Operations Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organization Science, and Science.  Her book, Organizational Learning:  Creating, Retaining and Transferring Knowledge (Kluwer, 1999) was a finalist for the Terry Book Award of the Academy of Management.  Linda has served or is currently serving on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Group Dynamics, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Organization Science. She has also served as chair of INFORMS’ College on Organizations, on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management, and as Departmental Editor of Management Science’s Department of Organizational Performance, Strategy, and Design.  Linda is currently Editor-in-Chief of Organization Science.

3. Martha Feldman, is the Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management and Professor of Social Ecology, Political Science, Sociology and Management at the University of California, Irvine. Her research on organizational routines explores the role of performance and agency in creating, maintaining and altering these fundamental organizational phenomena.  Her research on public management examines how we can use our understandings of organizational process to create inclusive policy practices.  Her research in qualitative and interpretive methods develops ways of gathering and analyzing data that help researchers open the black boxes they confront in theory and in informants’ descriptions.  She serves on the editorial boards of Organization Science, Organization Studies, Organizational Research Methods and is the book review editor for the International Journal of Public Management http://www.seweb.uci.edu/faculty/feldman/