Seeking the robust core of organisational learning theory

Abstract

Organisational learning theory (OLT) has become a hot topic of conversation in academic journals. However, the variety of descriptions seem to suggest no unified understanding of what OLT is. In this paper, I draw on a sample of 12 recent papers as samples of normal science and exemplars of our present level of scholarship to conduct a propositional analysis of the structure of OLT. This analysis identifies the core of OLT and finds that OLT has a robustness of 0.16 on a scale of zero to one. This low level of robustness suggests that OLT may be of limited efficacy in application. This paper creates a benchmark for the progress of OLT and suggests opportunities for advancing our understanding of OLT.