Collaborating to Know?: Interorganizational Engagement and Learning

Abstract

We approached the considerable body of literature on learning in collaborative situations in order to explore the possibility of pulling the separate strands into a broad conceptual framework which might offer new insights. The literature focus in the framework was deliberately upon the interorganizational field, although we do touch upon some more general issues related to organizational learning and knowledge where these help to elucidate key questions. Our aim in doing so was to explore whether such a framework might have: utility as a guide for empirical work; some validity in its own right; or a combination of these possibilities. We worked with the literature through processes of collation, synthesis and interpretive reasoning. This mapping and consequent exploration of the terrain led to the development of a framework conceptualising the processes of learning in collaborative situations. The central elements of the framework are attitudes to learning, the characteristics of collaborative learning situations and learning outcomes. We found that this framework allowed us to infer patterns of engagement between partners and learning situations. This in turn helped to describe, and perhaps begin to explain, the different learning trajectories suggested in our reading of the literature. In presenting the framework and elaborating the learning trajectories here, we seek to engage in discussion about the extent to which these might be useful in empirical and theoretical contexts.