Organizations learn from experience. Sometimes, however, history is not generous with experience. We explore how organizations convert infrequent events into interpretations of history, and how they balance the need to achieve agreement on interpretations with the need to interpret history correctly. We ask what methods are used, what problems are involved, and what improvements might be made. Although the methods we observe are not guaranteed to lead to consistent agreement on interpretations, valid knowledge, improved organizational performance, or organizational survival, they provide possible insights into the possibilities for and problems of learning from fragments of history.
This paper differs from previous examinations of organizational learning in that it is broader in scope and more evaluative of the literatures. Four constructs related to organi...
The management and processing of organizational knowledge are increasingly being viewed as critical to organizational success. By exploring how firms access and exploit alliance...
Cognition in organizations is a distributed phenomenon, in which individual members of an organization reflect upon their experience, make plans, or take action. Organizational ...
How should we understand why firms exist? A prevailing view has been that they serve to keep in check the transaction costs arising from the self-interested motivations of indiv...
The persistence of learning within organizations and the transfer of learning across organizations are examined on data collected from multiple organizations. Results indicate t...
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