s focus on the reorganization learning of top management. These measures include: organizational learning; corporate venture development; a loosely-coupled system of management organization; workshops to implement strategic planning; and integration of employees into the strategic management function.
Organizational learning has been often viewed as a key to enhancing organizational performance. It is suggested that organizational learning is needed, for example, for enabling organizations to formulate and implement appropriate strategies (e.g., Argyris & Schon, 1996), to maintain a dynamic balance between exploration of new possibilities and exploitation of existing ones (March, 1991), and to introduce changes in the organization based on the environmental changes (e.g., Drucker, 1994).
Organizational learning literature suggests that organizations learn either by acquiring pre-existing information primarily from outside or by developing new knowledge through the actions and interactions of organizational members (Argyris & Schon, 1996). These two processes are known as knowledge acquisition and knowledge development modes of learning. The knowledge acquisition mode involves collection, distribution, interpretation, and use of information that already exists in some form. The processes involved in this mode are mostly structured, based on predetermined learning needs, largely sequential, and the source of knowledge is generally external to the learning unit. This mode could be dominant in organizations that have access to external knowledge and can rely on such knowledge for undertaking actions. Learning developed from market research about demographic and purchasing trends, for example, is based primarily on this mode of learning. Examples of the knowledge acquisition mode are vicarious learning, such as, acquisition of second-hand experience through corporate intelligence, learning through imitation, congenital learning (know...