Crossan, M., Lane, H., & White, R. (1999). An Organizational Learning Framework: From Intuition to Institution. The Academy of Management Review,24(3), 522-537.

I’ve read it before, but enjoyed reading it again. The classic paper of Crossan, Lane and White on Organizational Learning is food for thought both for academia and practice-oriented organisations.

I enjoy the frameworks given in this paper: the four processes of learning which includes personal, group and organizational level : Intuiting (personal), Intepreting (personal), Integrating (group) and institutionalizing (organization). The paper effectively shown how these processes can interact to generate organizational learning. They maintain the importance of the individual being a cornerstone in the organizational learningprocess. However: routines, diagnostic systems and rules and procedures must develop as a result of the individual and group-level processes. This is where many organizations probably struggle. Thus institutionalization can lead to barriers for organizational learning.

For strategic management, this implies that all levels must be taken into account when developing and deploying strategy. As strategic management (SM) is more involved in the organization than classic strategic planning (Whittington, 2019), SM needs to link into learningprocesses on all levels.

The article has been cited 1650 times in academic texts. Which is quite a lot. And the popularity has been growing (Web of Science). Definitely one to read! Do you agree?