Organisational unlearning, relearning and strategic flexibility: from the perspective of updating routines and knowledge

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to adopt the perspective of updating routines and knowledge to explore how organisational unlearning and relearning jointly facilitate strategic flexibility. Drawing on the knowledge-based view and routine view, this study builds a theoretical model and examines it with survey data from 194 firms in China. Organisational relearning is an important link between organisational unlearning and strategic flexibility. Specifically, organisational unlearning has no direct effects on strategic flexibility. Organisational unlearning promotes organisational relearning, thereby improving strategic flexibility. Organisational relearning fully mediates the relationship between organisational unlearning and strategic flexibility. Therefore, firms should regard organisational unlearning and relearning as interactive enablers for strategic flexibility rather than solely focusing on one.