How organizations implement new practices in dynamic context: role of deliberate learning and dynamic capabilities development in health care units

Abstract

Purpose

Organizations learn semi-automatically through experience or consciously through deliberate learning efforts. As there seems to be a “black-box” in the possible linkages between deliberate learning and new practice implementation, this paper aims to develop and test a process model, linking deliberate learning and new practice implementation through complementary competencies of task and environmental flexibility.

Design/methodology/approach

As part of a field study, health-care improvement program (to transfer the improvement training program for new practice implementation) of 186 HCUs was used for testing our hypothesis. In addition to descriptive statistics, multiple hierarchical regressions and bootstrapping were used to test the study hypotheses.

Findings

Findings suggest that deliberate learning is positively and significantly related with new practice implementation, and dynamic capabilities in the form of task and environmental flexibility mediates this relationship.

Research limitations/implications

The present study makes theoretical and practical contributions by linking literature from new practice, organizational learning and dynamic capabilities; and by delving into the deliberate learning activities undertaken by health-care units.

Originality/value

Organizational learning in health care has almost become inevitable today due to the ever-changing dynamics of the industry. Barring handful of studies, the current state of literature is almost entirely tilted towards experience-based learning and deliberate learning is not well studied. To address this gap, the study aims to develop and test a process model linking development of dynamic capabilities with deliberate learning and new practice implementation. Further, findings of this study will help organizations and managers to understand and thereby effectively manage new practice implementation process through the use of deliberate activities.

Citation

Mittal, S. (2019), "How organizations implement new practices in dynamic context: role of deliberate learning and dynamic capabilities development in health care units", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 1176-1195. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-11-2018-0686