How organizations learn? A review of literature

Open systems perspective, a major school in Organizational theory, emphasized context and fluid relationships of organizations to their environments. The 1990s saw the advent of an influential theory in this school: Organizational Learning. This paper aimed at better understanding of this theory. Reviewing the literature, related parts have been collected and combined. Learning has 3 stages: individual, collective and organizational. Organizational learning itself has its dimensions –Mental Model, Personal Mastery, systems thinking, Shared Vision, and Team Learning-, its processes -Organizational Memory, Information Interpretation, Information Distribution, Knowledge Acquisition- and its objectives –Survival, Efficiency, Effectiveness-.