Blackwell Reference Online

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This chapter is concerned with the relevance of social identity for organizational learning. It explores how the identities that people internalize as members of social groups can impact on the organizational learning process, and how in turn that process can contribute to the evolution of an organization's identity. Organizational learning is understood to be the acquisition, conversion, and creation of knowledge aimed at facilitating the attainment of organizational goals. Writers on organization are increasingly coming to recognize links between identity and learning ( Brown and Starkey, 2000 ). However, with some exceptions such as Rothman and Friedman (2001) , identity and learning are often treated as organizational-level phenomena in ways that are ontologically problematic and oversimplify analysis of the subject As Edmondson (1999a : 300) has noted, “an implicit assumption in many accounts of organizational learning is that organizations are undifferentiated entities, such that within-organization variance is immaterial.” Given that organizational learning is a socially constructed process, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the relevance of how organizations are socially constituted in terms of different groups and their identities ( Child and Heavens, 2001 ). Variations in the configuration of group identities, and in their compatibility with what the organization ... log in or subscribe to read full text