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This chapter defines a learning culture and discusses the relationship between knowledge and learning. The authors explain why learning is essential to bringing knowledge to life and incentivizing knowledge flows and use. The chapter addresses the interplay between knowledge and learning cultures. A key point in the chapter is the value of mistakes as learning opportunities. The authors explain how mistakes are viewed in the industrial economy and how this perspective impedes critical organizational learning. Specifically, we define mistakes, explain the double cognitive bias of mistakes, explain the tendency and impact of hiding mistakes, the side effects of double mistake bias, learn to learn from mistakes, and take on the challenge of reconciling mistake acceptance and avoidance. Finally, the chapter addresses the importance of cultivating a learning climate to realize your learning culture.

In this chapter, the authors explain the value of the KLC approach to building cultural capacity in knowledge-driven organizations. This chapter also explains the importance of coherent multilevel interactions to expose and experience a company culture. The authors reinforce that culture is learned simultaneously, consciously and unconsciously, through all company’s related experiences. The effects of leadership, hierarchy, and maturity on cultural capacity are discussed at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Finally, the chapter provides a step-by-step methodology and sample questions for taking stock of an organization’s cultural capacity.

Action learning is a term that is used with a wide range of meanings: from an equivalent term for experiential learning to a philosophy of learning. This chapter takes the latter position and focuses on action learning as a scholarly activity. The chapter has two main sections. In the first part the breadth and depth of action learning is introduced: its variations and applications are discussed. The second part explores how action learning is at the cutting edge of engaging practitioners in real change and at the development of scholar–practitioners and actionable knowledge of how organizations change, how it offers a modality of an action-oriented approach to inquiry that accords with contemporary paradigms of useful and relevant research, its contribution to organization and management theory comes through how critical action learning engages with issues of power and social relations and through its critique of management education.

Based on her membership in the Educational Research Group (The Danish name for the group is UFO group – Educational Research = UddannelsesFOrskning) at Copenhagen Business School, the author discusses learning as a paradox and how learning processes may be supported in adult learners through the use of social media enhanced learning platforms in the classroom. The chapter begins by looking at three paradigms in regard to adult learners’ learning processes and discusses how these paradigms may be put to use in connection with the application of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. The chapter discusses the changing roles of educators and learners in connection with these new tools, just as it discusses which tools may be particularly useful in certain conditions. It ends by mentioning a number of concrete cases where the use of (first) an e-learning platform and (later on) social media enhanced learning tools has had an impact on student learning. The chapter additionally links university learning to organizational learning, since processes and principles are transferable between the two.

This chapter presents an integrated model of principal preparation featuring full-time internships and enquiry-based coursework. The development of the full-time internship component is the result of an award of a US DoE School Leadership Program grant in 2008 to expand and enhance the Ritchie Program for School Leaders, a collaborative principal preparation program between University of Denver and Denver Public Schools. The integration of Shulman’s (2005) model of practical, cognitive, and moral apprenticeships for professional education provided the foundation of the design and implementation of full-time internships through this collaborative partnership for principal preparation. Collaboration among interns, host principals, district leadership, and university faculty provides the focus, means, and structures of learning. This chapter describes the evolution of the Ritchie Program for School Leaders through features and initial impact of full-time internships and offers lessons learned about mentoring aspiring leaders.

To innovatively address challenges faced by corporate entrepreneurship (CE) in this modern age of globalization and digitalization, this chapter takes a fresh look at questions of learning and leadership from the perspective of organization development (OD), a field that has long studied questions of planned and emergent change. This alternate perspective adds to our knowledge and understanding of the role of individuals and teams in CE and presents opportunities to integrate learning and leadership. In particular, the OD literature provides us with multilevel measurement methods and tools to better analyze the employee and team level-of-analysis. As a result, these insights should enable us to better explain the interaction between CE strategic orientation and the performance of corporate venturing employees and teams, as well as the progress of organizational strategic renewal and market (re)creation efforts.

This book centers on several key areas of social engagement and social learning in higher education today, including social networking platforms and e-portfolios. In addition to these Web 2.0 technologies, rapid improvements in related communication technologies (e.g., broadband services, wireless, mobile phones, and tablets) have also provided the necessary infrastructure components by which educators implement innovative teaching and learning practices on a larger scale, in a more reliable manner, and in a more targeted fashion. These technologies are also transforming our views of what it means to learn in an increasingly globalized, interconnected, and pluralistic world. The authors have presented several perspectives on how to use social networking tools to better engage learners in more meaningful and authentic learning activities. Social networking sites like Facebook are not a panacea for effective learning, but they do provide instructors and students with a convenient platform for enhancing the teaching and learning process. Instructors also play an important part in modeling proper online behavior through their presence on the platform and their interaction with their students. However, these tools are only one piece of the learning puzzle. The ultimate goal is to enable students to become lifelong learners and to instill in them a high value for learning that matures over their lifetime. As such, these tools can be used to better engage students more deeply in authentic and personally meaningful learning experiences.

Contextualizing grammar in second language (L2) classrooms implies making grammar constructs relevant to the learners’ world; affording learners the opportunities to better comprehend and apply these concepts in their own milieus. This instructional design (ID) has been devised to contextualize grammar and to explore learner engagement of pre-service English teachers through Computer-Aided Learning (CAL) and Task-based Learning (TBL) in a technology-driven learning environment. CAL encompasses technology-aided discussions, multi-media presentations, online tests and exercises, and social media deployment. TBL, on the other hand, contextualizes grammar using technology and social network in planning, executing, and presenting four assigned tasks: picture essay, brochure design, dialogue composition, and comic strips illustration. Facebook is the e-portfolio of the class, archiving all group and individual output. The CAL-TBL tandem is propelled by group initiatives and class collaboration evident in group discussions and planning, microteaching, task presentations, peer reviews, and self-evaluations. These initiatives engage learners; empowering students to collaboratively take active part and responsibility for their own learning. The three-hour-class meets every week in a computer laboratory. The post-semester feedback and online poll course design review as well as the University Course Evaluation comments have shown that the ID, from the learners’ perspective, is effective in contextualizing grammar and in engaging learners.