Exploring the divide – organizational learning and learning organization

The terminologies organizational learning and learning organization were once used interchangeably. However, in the mid‐1990s there was a bifurcation into two streams. Organizational learning became the descriptive stream and dealt mostly with the learning processes in the organization. This stream had its roots in social and cognitive psychology with a strong academic focus. Learning organization became the prescriptive stream with a strong practical focus. A broad theoretical framework is presented that links the two streams. In the implementation of learning organization prescriptions, enormous practical difficulties were encountered, making implementations less than successful. The barriers involved in transfer of learning to all levels in the organization (i.e. individual, collective, organizational, and inter‐organizational) and the absence of a link to the learning processes are identified as the major issues in implementation failures. It is postulated that these are the reasons for the gap between the two streams.