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The primary objective of this chapter is to synthesize and organize prevailing theoretical perspectives on metacognition into a framework that can enhance understanding of metacognitive phenomena, with the aim of stimulating future research in the field of organizational behavior and human resources management (OBHRM). The author starts with a review of the history of metacognition research, distinguishing it from related theoretical constructs such as cognition, executive function, and self-regulation. Following this, the author outlines five constituent elements of metacognition – metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experiences, metacognitive monitoring, a dynamic mental model, and metacognitive control – with discussions on their interrelationships and respective functions. Two approaches to metacognition, a process approach and an individual-difference approach, are then presented, summarizing key questions and findings from each. Finally, three broad directions for future research in OBHRM are proposed: examining metacognitive processes, considering mechanisms beyond learning to explain the effects of metacognition, and exploring both domain-specific and general metacognitive knowledge and skills. The implications of these research directions for personnel and human resources management practices are discussed.

Researchers and practitioners have shown a great deal of interest in the topic of organizational learning in the last two decades. The key dilemma, however, remains whether organizations as entities can do anything in their own right. Is it meaningful to think of organizations as having objectives, learning abilities, and memories, or do organizations only learn through their current members? The aim of this study is to shed light on what organizational memory is and what role it plays during organizational change. We report the findings of a study on organizational memory and learning in a large electronics firm. Using a variety of research methods we analyze mutations in organizational memory traces over a long period of time and discuss whether or not an organization can learn from previous change experiences, encapsulated in organizational memory traces, as it goes through a different, but related, change program. Finally, implications of this study for change management are described.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the learning orientation of export functions affects their growth performance.

A mail survey of 354 exporters was conducted, and the data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Results show that the link between response to export information and export growth is quadratic (U‐shaped), and that this relationship is moderated by use of export memory. Export memory itself was found to be beneficial to export growth when responsiveness to export information is low, but detrimental under high levels of export information responsiveness. In turn, response to export information is driven by export information acquisition and distribution, as well as by the management of mental export models. Export memory use is also enhanced by the latter and the integration of export information within organizational systems.

The authors examine learning orientation in the context of export functions for the first time, and in doing so, uncover specific relationships that export learning constructs have with the growth performance of export firms. In addition, most of the organizational learning literature focuses on the information‐processing behaviors of firms (e.g. acquisition, dissemination, use), overlooking the important discipline‐based constructs such as the management of mental models. The authors show how important the challenging of mental export models is for maximizing response to export information and use of export memory.

High levels of (human and financial) investment in export information processing are important for export growth. Export memory use should be encouraged, but only to confirm or triangulate new information. In addition, export staff should be formally trained in challenging the preconceptions they may have developed about their export markets.

This study is the first to consider the learning orientation of export functions, and to do so from a holistic (both information processing‐ and discipline‐based) perspective.

This paper presents an educational virtual reality (VR) game and experiments with different methods of including it into the teaching process. The purpose of this research study is to discover if immersive VR games can be used as an effective pedagogical tool if blended with traditional lectures by assisting learning gain, memory and knowledge retention while increasing edutainment value.

This research design comprises three different methods of learning: lecture-based involving lecture slides, infographics, and a video, game-based involving an immersive VR game of oil rig exploration, and the combination of lecture and game-based. Participants of each method filled up a questionnaire before and after participation to measure the learning gain, memory, and knowledge retention.

From the predominant findings of the study, the combined method demonstrated a significant increase in learning gain, memory, and knowledge retention and maybe a potentially suitable pedagogical tool.

Limitations of the study include findings based on one VR game with a specific educational topic, additionally, it is suspected that having different participants for each of the three methods may have slightly affected the results, albeit to a limited extent.

Findings of this study will provide evidence that VR games can be used alongside traditional lectures to aid in the learning process. Educators can choose to include VR games into their curriculums to improve the educational delivery process.

This research contributes to ways of incorporating VR games into educational curriculums through findings of this study highlighting the combination of VR games with lectures.

Motivation significantly influences learning and memory. While a long history of research has focused on simple forms of associative learning, such as Pavlovian conditioning, recent research is beginning to characterize how motivation influences episodic memory. In this chapter we synthesize findings across behavioral, cognitive, and educational neuroscience to characterize motivation’s influence on memory. We provide evidence that neural systems underlying motivation, namely the mesolimbic dopamine system, interact with and facilitate activity within systems underlying episodic memory, centered on the medial temporal lobes. We focus on two mechanisms of episodic memory enhancement: encoding and consolidation. Together, the reviewed research supports an adaptive model of memory in which an individual’s motivational state (i.e., learning under states of reward or punishment) shapes the nature of memory representations in service of future goals. The impact of motivation on learning and memory, therefore, has very clear implications for and applications to educational settings.

The purpose of this paper is to present the MEMORAe project, the goal of which is to offer an alternative to the loss of competencies and knowledge in an organization.

Within the project MEMORAe, interest was focused on the capitalization of knowledge and competencies in the context of an organization. The E‐MEMORAe environment was developed based on the concept of learning organizational memory. This environment is dedicated to be used by a semantic learning organization as support for competency‐based training. It is evaluated in this context.

In the E‐MEMORAe environment, learning content is indexed by knowledge and competencies organized by means of ontologies. Learners can acquire thise knowledge and these competencies by doing different tasks, accessing different contents. In the memory, competencies are defined via the knowledge they enable to be put into practice.

It is known that some industrial communities of practice are interested in the use of E‐MEMORAe.

Within the MEMORAe project, an ontology‐based learning organizational memory is proposed as support for learning object retrieval by competency for competency based learning. Using such a memory enables and goes beyond organizational knowledge management. Knowledge and competencies are defined and structured to facilitate their access and their learning. This latter is also made possible thanks to the resources that they index.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between memory (short- and long-term), a foundational cognition in learning and face-to-face, video-based and flipped instructional modalities.

This study used a one-way analysis of variance and linear regression analyses to compare students’ aggregated answers on multiple-choice questions over two different periods, including a repeat question from an earlier examination. Also, student-level answers were subjected to a binary logistic regression.

Face-to-face unambiguously was associated with superior short-term memory including ethics. Video-based performance was associated with a superior long-term memory, and flipped’s performance lay in between for both memory types.

This study does not account for students’ learning styles, instructors’ preferred teaching approach and computer-aided virtual simulations.

The findings of this study may serve as a reference point for optimally blending multiple instruction modalities to leverage its association with memory for learning matched to instructors’ styles, students’ curricular pathway and coping with institutional imperatives.

This paper provides a way for higher education institutions to match instructional modalities to memory needs, including business ethics as students’ progress on their pathways towards graduation.

This study illuminates the association between memory, a widely accepted foundational cognition in learning that has been under researched compared to critical thinking and reasoning, and three instructional modalities: face-to-face, video-based and flipped classroom.

One of the urgent questions in the field of diversity is the knowledge about effective diversity practices. This paper aims to advance our knowledge on organizational change toward diversity by combining concepts from diversity studies and organizational learning.

By employing a social practice approach to organizational learning, the author will be able to go beyond individual learning experiences of diversity practices but see how members negotiate the diversity knowledge and how they integrate their new knowledge in their day-to-day organizational norms and practices. The analysis draws on data collected during a longitudinal case study in a financial service organization in the Netherlands.

This study showed how collective learning practices took place but were insufficiently anchored in a collective memory. Change agents have the task to build “new” memory on diversity policies and gender inequality as well as to use organizational memory to enable diversity policies and practices to be implemented. The inability to create a community of practice impeded the change agenda.

Future research could expand our knowledge on collective memory of knowledge on diversity further and focus on the way employees make use of this memory while doing diversity.

The current literature often tends to analyze the effectiveness of diversity practices as linear processes, which is insufficient to capture the complexity of a change process characterized with layers of negotiated and politicized forms of access to resources. The author would argue for more future work on nonlinear and process-based perspectives on organizational change.

The contribution is to the literature on diversity practices by showing how the lack of collective memory to “store” individual learning in the organization has proven to be a major problem in the management of diversity.

This paper discusses the effects of enabling conditions of project knowledge management in building volatile organizational memory. The theoretical rationale underlies a recursive relationship among enabling conditions of project knowledge management, organizational learning and memory.

This research employs a qualitative descriptive single case study approach to examine a mobile application development project undertaken by a major software company in Brazil. The analysis focuses on the project execution using an abductive analytical framework. The study data were collected through in-depth interviews and company documents.

Based on the research findings, the factors that facilitate behavior and strategy in managing project knowledge pose a challenge when it comes to fostering organizational learning. While both these factors play a role in organizational learning, the exchange of information from previous experience could be strengthened, and the feedback from the learning process could be improved. These shortcomings arise from emotional tensions that stem from power struggles within knowledge hierarchies.

Based on the research, it is recommended that project-structured organizations should prioritize an individual’s professional experience to promote organizational learning. Organizations with well-defined connections between their projects and strategies can better establish interconnections among knowledge creation, sharing and coding.

The primary contribution is to provide a comprehensive view that incorporates the conditions required to manage project knowledge, organizational learning and memory. The findings lead to four propositions that relate to volatile memory, intuitive knowledge, learning and knowledge encoding.