Exploring the Phenomenon of Learning Organization Intervention on the Dynamics of Organizational Learning from the Cross-level Perspective

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Organizational learning is the process of how learning occurs in organizations; it involves individual, group and organizational learning. This study seeks to illuminate dynamics of cross-level learning by focusing on facilitators and impediments to the learning transfer from individuals to the organization, and vice versa. A qualitative case study of a local community hospital with a two-year learning organization (LO) intervention sheds light on team-learning contexts as the key to moving forward learning effects between the various levels. A socio-cognitive process of team learning accounts for an explicit transfer process. Within the process, team-learning skills, characterized by inquiry and reflection, broaden individual intuiting, and interpreting, comprising the transfer mechanism between individual learning and team learning. Team-learning norms give rise to the informal coordination mechanisms, and integrate interdepartmental learning effects. Team-learning projects institutionalize learning outcomes through improvement of standard operational process (SOP), which further reinforce the linkage between team learning and organizational learning. Endorsement by a subunit supervisor is the institution force for feedback flows, thus completing an iterative cycle of individual, team and organizational learning. This research concludes that under the support of LO, the idea of organizational learning and its learning activities can be practically carried out. LO practices integrate cross-level dynamics and elucidate learning factors that make transfer of learning across multiple levels.