This paper considers the relationship between the stocks and flows of learning across levels in an overall organizational learning system. A survey instrument based on the Strategic Learning Assessment Map (SLAM) was administered to 15 individuals representing senior-, middle- and non-management levels from each of 32 organizations, resulting in a total sample of 480 respondents. This research supports the premise that there is a positive relationship between the stocks of learning at all levels and business poibrmance. Furthermore, the proposition that the misalignment of stocks and flows in an overall organizational learning system is negatively associated with business per, finance is also supported.

A Review and Assessment of Research This paper reviews and assesses the emerging research literature on information technology and organizational learning. After discussing issues of meaning and measurement, we identify and assess two main streams of research: studies that apply organizational learning concepts to the process of implementing and using information technology in organizations; and studies concerned with the design of information technology applications to support organizational learning. From the former stream of research, we conclude that experience plays an important, yet indeterminate role in implementation success; learning is accomplished through both formal training and participation in practice; organizational knowledge barriers may be overcome by learning from other organizations; and that learning new technologies is a dynamic process characterized by relatively narrow windows of opportunity. From the latter stream, we conclude that conceptual designs for organizational memory information systems are a valuable contribution to artifact development; learning is enhanced through systems that support communication and discourse; and that information technologies have the potential to both enable and disable organizational learning. Currently, these two streams flow independently of each other, despite their close conceptual and practical links. We advise that future research on information technology and organizational learning proceeds in a more integrated fashion, recognizes the situated nature of organizational learning, focuses on distributed organizational memory, demonstrates the effectiveness of artifacts in practice, and looks for relevant research findings in related fields. 2

This paper studies how firms use acquisitions to achieve long-term business reconfiguration. We base the study in a routine-based perspective on business dynamics. We develop and test hypotheses concerning the relative extent of change by acquiring and non-acquiring businesses, focusing on product line addition, retention, and deletion as forms of changing resources. We develop and test hypotheses that compare and contrast resource-deepening and resource extension arguments. We test the hypotheses with data from more than 3000 firms that offered more than 200 product lines in the U.S. medical sector between 1978 and 1995. We find that acquisitions play a major role in business reconfiguration, offering opportunities for firms to both build on existing resources and obtain substantially different resources. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This paper studies how firms use acquisitions to reconfigure their business resources. Reconfiguration involves the retention, deletion, and addition of resources (Capron, Dussauge, and Mitchell, 1998). We view acquisitions as a key mechanism through which firms attempt to change their businesses (Capron and Mitchell, 1999). Our immediate conceptual goal is to study acquisitions as means of attempting to change both targets and acquirers. This study is a step towards understanding the broader issues surrounding successful and failed business change. The conceptual base for the study derives from what we refer to as a routine-based perspective on strategy, drawing on Williamson (1999). As we describe below, this perspective views firms as bundles of routines, which both provide firm value and create constraints on how businesses Key words: acquisitions; business change; resource reconfiguration; routine-based perspective on strategy

Based on a study of knowledge transfer within more than 15 industries, across three forms of governance, and between both domestic and international R&D partners, knowledge transfer success was found to be associated with several key variables, and to hinge upon (a) both R&D units’ understanding where the desired knowledge resides within the source, (b) the extent to which the parties share similar knowledge bases, and the extent of interactions between the source and the recipient to (c) transfer the knowledge and (d) participate in an articulation process through which the source’s knowledge is made accessible to the recipient.

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This paper proposes and tests a model of IJV learning and performance that segments absorptive capacity into the three components originally proposed by Cohen and Levinthal (1990). First, trust between an IJV’s parents and the IJV’s relative absorptive capacity with its foreign parent are suggested to influence its ability to understand new knowledge held by foreign parents. Second, an IJV’s learning structures and processes are proposed to influence its ability to assimilate new knowledge from those parents. Third, the IJV’s strategy and training competence are suggested to shape its ability to apply the assimilated knowledge. Revisiting the Hungarian IJVs studied by Lyles and Salk (1996) 3 years later, we find support for the knowledge understanding and application predictions, and partial support for the knowledge assimilation prediction. Unexpectedly, our results suggest that trust and management support from foreign parents are associated with IJV performance but not learning. Our model and results offer a new perspective on IJV learning and performance as well as initial insights into how those relationships change over time. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Over the past two decades there has been a surge in the number of international joint ventures (IJVs)

Software Process Improvement (SPI) is an approach to systematic and continuous improvement of a software producing organization’s ability to produce and deliver quality software within time and budget constraints. SPI initiatives often experience difficulties and problems when the improvements are going to be implemented and institutionalized in the organization’s daily practices. In this paper we discuss the learning processes that take place in SPI based on an analysis of three industrial SPI projects. A finding of the study is that an SPI project needs to pay attention to the creation of both tacit and explicit knowledge in order to improve practices. A second finding suggests that implementing and institutionalizing improvements should take its starting point at the group level and involve the development projects. A third finding suggests that sustained SPI processes require ongoing interactions between different learning processes.

The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 th century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsizing, rather than strategic restructuring, as a result of both internal and external constraints on restructuring strategies. Building on the organizational learning and resource-based theories, we analyze strategies available to management in privatized, former state-owned enterprises in transition economies to restructure their organization. Both internal forces promoting or inhibiting the restructuring process, and external constraints arising in the transition context are examined. A model and testable propositions are developed that explain post-privatization performance. Implications of our research point to the ways in which firms should manage and develop their resource base to transform to competitive enterprises.

Abstract In the midst of the turbulence wrought by the global economy, it has become common to see projects as an essential medium for achieving change. However, projectbased learning practices—as a subset of organizational learning practices—have not kept pace with this development. To explore this concern, we have carried out a study on practices adopted by organizations for learning through projects involving nineteen companies from across Europe and from a range of different industries. We use the concepts of variation, selection and retention in organizational learning to analyze our findings and report the challenges faced by project-based organizations in each of the areas highlighted. We conclude that time pressures, centralization and deferral are the key characteristics of learning in project-based firms and that these impede project-based members in learning from and through projects. Key Words: centralization; deferral; organizational learning; projects; reflection; time It has become popular to conceive of management in terms of the difficulties of rapid and discontinuous change (Blackler et al., 1993; McKenna, 1999; Handy, 1995; Hastings, 1993). This Heraclitean turn in management thinking can be attributed to many factors including the shift of standard production to low wage economies (Reich, 1991); the heightened power of buyers and refinement of market segments (Galbraith, 1995); and the increasing speed of innovation diffusion (Leonard, 1997). Flexible organizational structures are advocated and the adoption of project-based ways of working is increasingly important (Kanter,

this paper. Our analysis of contradictions leads us to propose alternative theoretical approaches to BPR research and practice. Theories that employ a "logic of contradiction" are likely to offer greater insight into contradictory practices such as BPR, as well as the more general issue of organizational change (Ford and Ford, 1994; Poole and Van de Ven, 1989; Robey, 1995; Van de Ven and Poole, 1995). Thus, rather than adding to the criticism of BPR, we seek to understand BPR's logical inconsistencies and contradictory results. We argue that a better theoretical understanding can improve both empirical research on BPR's implications for organizational performance and, ultimately, applied re-engineering efforts