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In an age of rapid knowledge expansion, external knowledge sources are available in abundance. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the way in which firms can effectively internalize explicit knowledge and direct it into the tacit knowledge of employees, thereby enhancing the organization's competitiveness (knowledge internalization).

An exploratory research is adapted to discuss the issue of knowledge internalization based on learning cycle theory. A theoretical framework is developed which provides an analytical perspective on the knowledge internalization.

The results of this study reveal that an “incomplete learning cycle” is one of the reasons why explicit knowledge could not be successfully converted into tacit knowledge. Hence, when a more complete learning cycle is followed, explicit knowledge is more easily converted into tacit knowledge.

This study's results can be considered as a stepping‐stone for future rigorous theoretical and empirical investigations.

This paper seeks to develop a framework of knowledge internalization based on learning cycle theory that will serve as reference for both the academic and business communities.

Notes that, in an environment of rapid change, organisational learning theory appears to offer much for organisations trying to grapple with change and growth. However, not all theorists agree on the methodologies of organisational learning, and there is little consensus about how organisations achieve both change and growth simultaneously. The paper attempts to expand the simplistic idea that organisational learning is an adaptive approach supported by individualized and stand‐alone strategies of learning and demonstrates how various conventions of learning can be understood as integrated learning cycles, from which organisations can chart new paradigms of learning in practice. Current theories of organizational learning are imbued with their own sense of history making, clever manifestos that support a workshop or case study approach, and questionable rather than empirical validations of an internally consistent phenomenon. Existing theories of learning, however, are valuable to the extent that they collectively represent a community of practice from which scholars and practitioners benefit. New conceptual approaches are needed, however, to link current practices and empirical observation, so that individualized approaches to organizational learning can be integrated.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a foreign subsidiary operates in emerging markets and integrates market orientation with organizational learning to achieve a competitive lead. It is an attempt to fill an evident gap in the literature of integrating organizational learning into a market-oriented competitive strategy through using a four-step collective learning cycle at General Motors Egypt (GME).

The paper adopts a qualitative case study methodology to thoroughly examine the viewpoints of 90 respondents via in-depth and unstructured interviews with both managers and employees working in a variety of divisions inside GME. An integrative qualitative data analysis approach is used to explore, synthesize, interpret and derive relationships resulting from the collected data.

This work advances the theory of organizational learning by testing the theme of collective learning cycle in a real work setting. It presents a real example of aligning market orientation into a collective learning cycle directed toward achieving competitive advantages.

This study provides scholars and practitioners alike with a real scenario on how and why a four-step organizational learning cycle functions as a building block to generate a competitive advantage. It also discusses the elements of collective learning that are not captured by the four-step collective learning cycle. Factors facilitating market-based organizational learning are also explored. However, the results generated are contingent on the investigated case study circumstances, which are limited in generalizability.

The paper addresses a set of directions through which auto assembly firms leverage both collective learning practices and knowledge-driven strategy to gain competitive advantages. The GME paradigm indicates how a firm can use collective learning not only to respond to an internal need for change but also to react to external market forces and constraints.

This study is the first of its kind to investigate the value of the cyclic learning concept from a strategic viewpoint in a multinational organizational context. It enriches the primarily practitioner literature on aligning collective learning into strategy with rich empirical examination of the learning practices of a leading foreign subsidiary. It resolves a gap in the literature regarding how organizational learning and knowledge management processes are aligned to market-oriented competitive strategy. The paper draws a number of critical research issues that call for refinement of the organizational learning cycle theory.

Building on the conceptual foundations suggested in the previous two papers in this issue, this article describes the application of a workplace learning cycle theory to the construction of a curriculum for a graduate‐level course of study in workplace education. As a way to prepare chief learning officers and heads of corporate universities, the piece argues, one can engage students in the process of analyzing the learning and knowledge‐use in a work environment through the lenses of the pedagogical and curricular concepts in these and other writings. Moving beyond the traditional concept of “training” for specified competencies, the graduate program aims to enable students to understand and use the more generative concepts of workplace knowledge‐use, and to promote learning as an essential feature of organizational life.

Reviews a range of theories, concepts and learning approaches that are relevant to the development of professionals. Goes on to take a look at how professionals actually learn, once they are in practice. The latter is based on empirical research conducted across 20 professions. Reports on the range of experiences and events that practitioners had found particularly formative in helping them become fully competent professionals; this point often not having been reached until long after their formal professional training had ended. An attempt is made to relate the formative experiences reported to particular theoretical approaches to learning. The experiences are classified into a number of general kinds of “learning mechanism” and these are placed within a “taxonomy of informal professional learning methods”. The results of the research should be of use both to professional developers and to individual professionals. They should assist developers in their planning of placements or post‐formal training. They should help individual professionals to maximise their professional learning, by seeking out particular kinds of experience and making the most of those that come their way.

Previous studies showed that combining learning based on experiences in the past with learning from an envisioned future scenario results in more innovative and radical ideas, as well as in a higher number of covered content domains. However, currently there is no holistic learning theory that integrates both sources of learning. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is possible to extend Bateson’s theory of learning, to link these two learning sources in one coherent framework.

To answer this research question, the author draws on learning from an envisioned future, and tries to link it with the most important levels of learning in Bateson’s framework.

This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to link the important but still underexplored aspect of “learning from the future” to the complex and multifaceted work of Bateson. Given the fact that both sources of learning and experience yield a great potential to create new knowledge, this study outlines a possibility to include both sources into one learning theory.

This work provides the basis for further research in building a general holistic theory of learning to learn.

On the individual level, the proposed approach can be easily applied with systemic coaching processes in general and coaching processes in the fields of developing an individual vision in particular. In the field of organizational learning, the awareness of different learning sources and different learning modes on the one hand and knowledge about the implementation of enabling spaces (PE-ba, FE-ba) to support these various learning modes on the other hand help organizations to generate new knowledge and create innovative and sustainable solutions, products and services.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is the first theoretical work that describes the integration of learning from past experiences and learning from future experiences in a methodological way.

This paper presented the learning process of a group of primary mathematics teachers who participated in two iterations of lesson design, enactment and reflection in a Chinese Lesson Study.

An expansive learning theory was employed to examine the teachers’ learning process in lesson study (LS) on representing fractions on a number line. The evolution of a germ cell was utilized to feature the transformation of the object of activity from abstract to concrete through resolving contradictions among LS members. The videos of lesson planning, research lessons (RLs) and debriefing meetings were collected and analyzed to reveal the expansive learning process.

The analysis showed that the teachers expanded their learning through transforming the object from diffuse to concrete and expanded through consciously articulating the germ cell. The outcomes of object-oriented activity include improving the enacted lesson which promoted students’ conceptual understanding.

This study made a unique contribution to understanding the learning process of teachers in Chinese LS from the perspective of expansive learning.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce case-method teaching (CMT), its advantages and disadvantages for the process of organizational training within organizations, as well as to compare its advantages and disadvantages with current training methods.

The authors applied a systematic literature review to define, identify and compare CMT with current methods.

In CMT, participants get involved with real-world challenges from an action perspective instead of analyzing them from a distance. Also, different reactions of the participants to the same challenge aid instructors to identify the individual differences of participants toward the challenge. Although CMT is still not considered as a popular organizational training method, the advantages of CMT may encourage organizational instructors to further apply it. Improving the long-term memory, enhancing the quality of decision making and understanding the individual differences of individuals are the advantages of CMT.

A lack of sufficient empirical researchers and the high cost of conducting this method may prevent practitioners to apply it.

The review suggested that CMT is able to bring dilemmas from the real world into training settings. Also, it helps organizations to identify the individual reactions before they make a decision.

While most language departments of the university offer service-learning (SL) subjects based on language teaching, such as “Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Local Schools” and “Serving the Community through Teaching English,” this paper aims to argue that teaching students to teach language(s) is yet to be the best strategy to serve the service recipients.

SL is widely understood as an experiential learning pedagogy that integrates academic focus, reflection and community service and is shown to be impactful. In Hong Kong, the first university that has made SL a graduation requirement is the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University). Considering this, new SL courses have proliferated over the past decade. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this paper examines personal narratives from a new SL subject aiming to raise awareness of refugees in Hong Kong. The data includes students’ reflective journals, co-created personal narratives and podcasts and semi-structured interviews.

This paper finds that crafting and recording narratives of shared experiences deepens cultural understanding, cultivates empathy and facilitates language learning in a genuine setting.

Ultimately, this paper advocates a well-designed SL that combines language, content and technology as a powerful, transformational experience for both college students and service recipients.

This paper focuses on a brand new SL course, “Storytelling for Understanding: Refugee Children in Hong Kong,” offered in Semester 1, 2022–2023. The subject was developed by the two authors from a language division affiliated to the University. The deliverables were podcast recordings, co-authored and co-edited by the students and the children.