Strategic Learning: The Continuous Side of Discontinuous Strategic Change

Abstract

The author introduces the concept of strategic learning to explain long-run dynamics of strategic behaviors and organizations. Because a firm's long-run adaptation is realized through a series of strategic behaviors and organizational innovations, organizational capability to design effective strategic behaviors and organizational structure is critical for a firm's growth and survival. A series of strategic behaviors is shaped through the stable generation mechanism. Strategic learning is organizational learning that improves the strategic capability of the organization and changes the basic assumptions underlying the stable generation mechanism that structures the strategic behavior design process. Organizations have various levels of knowledge and learn at all levels. The levels of organizational learning interact, making higher order learning such as strategic learning problematic. Distinguishing characteristics of strategic learning are that it is learning without questioning and without unlearning in advance. It starts from a current set of basic assumptions and ends with a new set of basic assumptions. Referring to related literature and a case study, the author describes the process of strategic learning as an intraorganizational ecological process, integrating various levels of learning in organizations and including processes of both strategic knowledge creation and strategic knowledge distillation. He also discusses theoretical and practical implications derived from the strategic learning model.