Towards Network Perspective of Intra-Organizational Learning: Bridging the Gap between Acquisition and Participation Perspective

Organizational learning is a scientific field of growing importance.It has developed from classic and foundational works to the two disparate perspectives today: the acquisition and the participation perspective.The first understands knowledge as a substance, mind as a container, and learning as a transfer of a substance from one mind to another.The second perspective focuses on communities of practice and observes no teaching but rather goal-directed practical learning.We argue that both are incomplete and that there is a need for overarching perspective that would build upon multiple-theoretical and multi-level framework of social network theories.Beside connecting acquisition and participation perspective it addresses organizational learning as a multiplex and dynamic process at individual, group, intra-organizational, as well as relational level of research.This contribution proposes network perspective to intra-organizational learning and develops seven descriptive claims to be tested using real-life case studies of social networks within organizations.Both exploratory and confirmatory social network techniques are to be applied.