Toward reconceptualizing organizational learning: a multidimensional interpretation

Reflecting on the massive literature available on “organizational learning” which tends to conceal rather than clarify this important concept, the author reorders Senge’s five capacities to show how individual learning can normally be developed into collective learning. Attempts have been made to transform Senge’s work into a three‐dimensional configuration, making it more explicit as to how the process of critical information/knowledge spreads throughout the system, and to the ultimate motives that drive an organization into such a process. Further postulation of the stages that an organization might have gone through during such a process is advanced. The important roles played by external environment and by internal organizational conditions, which may facilitate or deter the process, are also identified.