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Increasing market pressures require organizations to rethink the development of change capability. Building a sustainable and flexible organization capable of responding in a timely manner to quickly changing customer demands without compromising technological excellence and quality is a complex task. This chapter builds on a five-year study of transformation efforts at a product development unit of Ericsson. The complexity of designing and managing learning mechanisms as both a transformation engine and a way to improve new product development is captured. The chapter points toward the challenges of designing and managing learning mechanisms that enhance organizational agility.

Supply chain (SC) professionals and their competence play a key role in creating value and competitive advantage for companies. A considerable amount of this competence is developed at work, but little is known about how this takes place. Drawing on constructivist learning theory, the authors investigate how SC professionals develop their competence at work.

The study takes off from a theoretical framework of workplace learning mechanisms, followed by a series of in-depth interviews with an expertise panel of profoundly competent and experienced SC professionals.

The results provide detailed insights into the learning process of SC professionals. The key findings show that SC professionals use a wide range of learning mechanisms throughout their careers, and that the contribution and complexity of these mechanisms differ and change dynamically with seniority. The findings also show that learning mechanisms should not be viewed as isolated phenomena, but closely related to every-day SCM work as well as learning attitude.

By conceptualizing learning as a process, and congregating the fragmented literature into a framework of workplace learning mechanisms, this research provides a theoretical reference point for future studies. The empirical findings bring a new level of detailed knowledge on how SC professionals learn at work.

The results can assist SC professionals, HR managers and academic program leaders in their quest to develop competence in the field of SCM.

This paper makes a unique contribution to the human aspects of SCM literature by presenting the first study that investigates in depth the crucial but complex process of how workplace learning takes place for SC professionals in practice.

The experience of successful firms has proven that one of the most important ways to promote co-learning and create successful networked innovations is the proper application of inter-organizational knowledge mechanisms. This study aims to use a resource-action-performance framework to open the black box on the relationship between networking capability and innovation performance. The research population embraces companies in the Iranian automotive industry.

Due to the latent nature of the variables studied, the required data are collected through a web-based cross-sectional survey. First, the content validity of the measurement tool is evaluated by experts. Then, a pre-test is conducted to assess the reliability of the measurement tool. All data are gathered by the Iranian Vehicle Manufacturers Association (IVMA) and Iranian Auto Parts Manufacturers Association (IAPMA) samples. The power analysis method and G*Power software are used to determine the sample size. Moreover, SmartPLS 3 and IBM SPSS 25 software are used for data analysis of the conceptual model and relating hypotheses.

The results of this study indicated that the relationships between networking capability, inter-organizational knowledge mechanisms and inter-organizational learning result in a self-reinforcing loop, with a marked impact on firm innovation performance.

Since there is little understanding of the interdependencies of networking capability, inter-organizational knowledge mechanisms, co-learning and their effect on firm innovation performance, most previous research studies have focused on only one or two of the above-mentioned variables. Thus, their cumulative effect has not examined yet. Looking at inter-organizational relationships from a network perspective and knowledge-based view (KBV), and to consider the simultaneous effect of knowledge mechanisms and learning as intermediary actions alongside, to consider the performance effect of the capability-building process, are the main advantages of this research.

This paper seeks to examine how foreign subsidiaries of MNCs can acquire new local knowledge by focusing on two intra-organizational factors of learning mechanisms and formative organizational context.

A mail survey was carried out with top managers among manufacturing subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) located in Hanoi, Vietnam and Guangdong province of China. In total 123 completed questionnaires from MNCs in Hanoi and China were received.

The results suggested that training and mentoring and formative organizational context has positive association with knowledge acquisition. However, three interaction terms between learning mechanisms (experimentation, socialization, training and mentoring) with formative organizational context are significantly related to knowledge acquisition. Besides, the authors also found a positive and significant association between knowledge acquisition and subsidiary performance.

Building a formative organizational context directly promotes knowledge acquisition and increases the effectiveness of more informal learning mechanisms. Besides, a learning mechanism may work differently in different contexts, and foreign managers need to be aware of when to apply what mechanisms.

The paper argues that the alignment between organizational context and organizational learning mechanisms can help the foreign subsidiaries acquire new knowledge and improve subsequent performance. Local knowledge acquisition in MNCs should be conceived as a deliberate and managed act, requiring a careful selection of both formal and informal mechanisms supported by appropriate contextual conditions in foreign subsidiaries.

International experience (IE) has been acknowledged to be the most useful method for developing global leaders. However, not everyone benefits equally from IE. During the last two decades, our understanding of why this is the case and how global leaders learn from IE has rapidly increased. Several individual and organizational enablers facilitating global leader learning from IE have been identified in the literature, as have learning mechanisms that make such learning possible. However, the literature remains fragmented, and there is a great need to integrate the findings in the field. Therefore, the present paper systematically examines peer-reviewed studies on global leaders' learning from IE published between 1998 and 2019. The study contributes to the extant literature by identifying and integrating individual enablers, organizational enablers, and key learning mechanisms from global leaders' IE and by suggesting topics for future research.

The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the roots of family firms' competitive advantages by defining and testing the familiness learning mechanisms that emerge from the interaction between family and firm. Because family members are economically, emotionally and socially attached to the firm, family firms are expected to be able to develop unique and difficult to imitate learning mechanisms related to family firm value creation.

This study operationalizes and tests the concept of the familiness learning mechanism using a sample of nonlisted Spanish family firms. The sample is analyzed using the structural equation modeling method.

Results show that family firms' ability to accumulate internal and external knowledge, integrate social knowledge, as well as create and retain socioemotional knowledge forms the concept of the familiness learning mechanism, and the authors show what implications it might have for family firm value creation.

By using the dynamic capabilities approach, this article highlights the importance of the knowledge and learning derived from family involvement in the firm. The creation of learning mechanisms occurs because of the close relationships between family members and their simultaneous participation in the family and in the company systems, which creates a unique context wherein knowledge and learning emerge in an idiosyncratic manner.

This paper seeks to apply the dynamic capability framework to explore why store managers within the same chain of restaurants perform differently. Specifically, this paper argues that knowledge resources and learning mechanisms are critical to the development of dynamic capabilities.

The approach takes the form of an empirical data analysis. Hypotheses are tested on 132 store managers in a leading fast‐food restaurant chain in Taiwan.

The findings indicate that dynamic capabilities increase store performance, and that both knowledge resources and learning mechanisms have a positive effect on dynamic capabilities. In addition, the effect of knowledge resources on dynamic capabilities is partially mediated by the type of learning mechanism.

Store managers must be able to develop dynamic capabilities if they are to deal with the rapidly changing environment they are facing. Knowledge resources and learning mechanisms both improve the development of dynamic capabilities.

This paper conceptualizes and empirically tests the relationships between knowledge resources, learning mechanisms, dynamic capabilities, and performance in the restaurants of a fast‐food chain. In addition, this paper investigates how dynamic capabilities work from a process perceptive by examining the mediation effect of the learning mechanisms.

This study aims to propose a blackboard approach using multistrategy machine learning student modeling techniques to learn the properties of students' inconsistent behaviors during their learning process.

These multistrategy machine learning student modeling techniques include inductive reasoning (similarity‐based learning), deductive reasoning (explanation‐based learning), and analogical reasoning (case‐based reasoning).

According to the properties of students' inconsistent behaviors, the ITS (intelligent tutoring system) may then adopt appropriate methods, such as intensifying teaching and practicing, to prevent their inconsistent behaviors from reoccurring.

This research sets the learning object on a single student. After the inferences are accumulated from a group of students, what kinds of students tend to have inconsistent behaviors or under what conditions the behaviors happened for most students can be learned.

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding and provide guidance for investments in organizational learning mechanisms for the establishment and evolution of organizational capabilities such as project portfolio management (PPM) and project management capabilities.

A multiple‐case study research project investigates the development of PPM capabilities in six successful organizations across diverse industries.

The research indicates that PPM and organizational learning are dynamic capabilities that enhance an organization's ability to achieve and maintain competitive advantage in dynamic environments. PPM capabilities are shown to co‐evolve through a combination of tacit experience accumulation, explicit knowledge articulation and explicit knowledge codification learning mechanisms. Although all three learning mechanisms are important throughout the establishment and evolution of PPM capability development, the research indicates that the development of an effective PPM capability will require particularly strong investments in enhancing tacit experience accumulation mechanisms and explicit knowledge codification mechanisms during the initial establishment or during periods of radical change to the PPM process.

The research includes a sample of six case studies and the results may not be generalisable. In addition, the research was conducted over a short period of time whereas a longitudinal study would be required to gain more detailed information about the development of capabilities over time.

The findings suggest that managers can enhance and sustain competitive advantage by investing in tacit experience accumulation as well as explicit knowledge articulation and codification learning mechanisms to develop their PPM capability. Strengthened investment in experience accumulation and knowledge codification learning mechanisms is recommended during establishment of the PPM capability.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the links between organizational learning and the development of dynamic capabilities. Original hypotheses are proposed and some initial support for these hypotheses is provided through multiple‐case study research.

While sustainability-oriented education is increasingly placing importance on engaging students in inter- and transdisciplinary learning processes with societal actors and authentic challenges in the centre, little research attends to how and what students learn in such educational initiatives. This paper aims to address this by opening the “black box” of learning in a Challenge Lab curriculum with transformational sustainability ambitions.

Realist evaluation was used as an analytical frame that takes social context into account to unpack learning mechanisms and associated learning outcomes. A socio-cultural perspective on learning was adopted, and ethnographic methods, including interviews and observations, were used.

Three context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) configurations were identified, capturing what students placed value and emphasis on when developing capabilities for leading sustainability transformations: engaging with complex “in-between” sustainability challenges in society with stakeholders across sectors and perspectives; navigating purposeful and transformative change via backcasting; and “whole-person” learning from the inside-out as an identity-shaping process, guided by personal values.

The findings of this paper can inform the design, development, evaluation and comparison of similar educational initiatives across institutions, while leaving room for contextual negotiation and adjustment.

This paper delineates and discusses important learning mechanisms and outcomes when students act as co-creators of knowledge in a sustainability-oriented educational initiative, working with authentic challenges together with societal actors.