Abstract Previous studies have emphasized that individuals play important roles in facilitating organizational unlearning; however, little is known about how leadership promotes organizational unlearning. From the perspective of routine dynamics, this study explores the effects of managers' behaviors on unlearning at the department level. Open‐ended questionnaire survey data were derived from 385 managers of intellectual property (IP) departments in Japan. A mixed‐methods approach combining the grounded theory approach (GTA) with content analysis was used. The GTA generated three types of departmental unlearning (improving efficiency, networking, and strategizing) and five types of managers' behaviors (initiation, planning, upward communication, horizontal communication, and implementation). Improving efficiency is regarded as operative or technical unlearning, whereas networking and strategizing are regarded as reinventive or adaptive unlearning. Based on content analysis, binary logistic regression analyses showed that managers' upward and horizontal communication were positively associated with networking and strategizing in IP departments, whereas implementation was positively associated with strategizing. This study provides new insights into the literature by identifying the specific managers' behaviors in promoting strategic unlearning in departments.
Makoto Matsuo (Sun,) studied this question.