Individuals’ Responses to Change: The Relationship Between Learning and Knowledge

The emphasis on learning and knowledge as key mechanisms for responding to the uncertainties of the business environment has been a central theme in much current thinking. Despite the interest in both concepts there appears to be little discussion of the relationship between learning and knowledge. More specifically there is currently limited research, which examines how learning and knowledge affect individuals’ responses to organisational changes. This paper makes a contribution to this debate by exploring the relationship between learning and knowledge with the individual manager as the unit of analysis. The paper presents recent empirical findings from a study of managers in the Financial Services Sector in the UK to demonstrate how individuals formulate their understanding about organisational changes. Moreover, the paper examines individuals’ responses to change in relation to the implicit and explicit messages of the organisation which have an impact on the way learning informs knowledge, as well as the way knowledge fuels learning.