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This paper aims to contribute to the literature on distributed sensemaking by studying how the police establish and develop their new position as police contacts during the police reform.

The authors studied how the position of police contact, a cornerstone of the recent Norwegian police reform, was interpreted and practised. The authors interviewed police contacts at two different times during reform implementation to explore how they made sense of and practised their job.

The authors identified three interpretations of the position of police contact and describe them as ideal types: an administrative position, a professional position and a strategic position. The ideal types were reinforced rather than developing towards a shared understanding. Our data demonstrate that the sensemaking processes and experimentation to settle into the new position involved local actors internally in the police and externally in relation to local authorities, and reinforced local interpretations.

This study supports the notion of sensemaking as distributed but extends previous research by suggesting that “ideal types” help us understand the content of interpretations. This study also extends the understanding by showing that distributed sensemaking takes place as individuals make sense of more open-ended problems. This challenges the understanding of the term distributed, because unless challenged, distributed sensemaking in isolated pockets of the organization remain local, and the authors suggest that the term local distributed sensemaking captures this phenomenon.

This paper aims to investigate whether the formal and informal learning patterns of community health-care nurses changed in the wake of a reform that altered their work by introducing new patient groups, and to explore whether conditions in the new workplaces facilitated or impeded shifts in learning patterns.

Data were collected through interviews with experienced nurses in community health care to learn whether and how they changed their learning patterns and the challenges they experienced in establishing new work practices.

In established learning patterns among nurses, the most experienced nurse passes on the knowledge to novices. These knowledge boundaries were challenged and they created new contexts and tasks calling for more cross-disciplinary cooperation. The informants acknowledged the need for formal and informal learning activities to change their learning pattern in addressing new knowledge challenges. Structural and cultural factors in community health care impeded changes in individual and collective learning patterns.

This paper reports a single case study. Further study is needed on how changes in structural and contextual conditions challenge the established formal and informal learning patterns.

It is crucial that managers facilitate the development of new routines, structures and cultures to support individual initiatives and the growth of necessary changes in established practice to implement a new reform.

This study’s contribution to the literature primarily concerns how changes in structural conditions challenge formal and informal learning patterns, and the structural and cultural conditions for these learning patterns.

This study aims to explore whether hierarchical position and organizational size affect perceptions of a learning organization (LO) during reform implementation.

An electronic survey was distributed in four Norwegian police districts at an early stage of reform implementation. One of the objectives of the reform was to develop the police toward being more knowledge-based, and there had been specific calls for the police to become a LO. The 753 respondents were top managers, middle managers and employees.

Respondents rated their organizations lower than benchmark scores on supportive learning environment, learning processes and practices and leadership that reinforces learning. The perceptions diverged across hierarchical levels: middle managers and top managers gave higher scores to the organization as a learning one than employees did. Respondents from large police districts gave higher scores to their organizational units as LOs than respondents from small police districts.

The study captures perceptions of characteristics of a LO at one point in reform implementation, and further studies are needed to fully understand explanations of diverging views within an organization as to whether it can be characterized as a LO.

Actual differences in local learning practices or different assessments of learning practices within the organization should be considered when developing LOs.

The study contributes to our knowledge of LOs by showing diverging views within the same organization in a context of reform implementation.

This paper aims to conceptualize the role of leadership in organizational learning processes in multinational companies (MNCs). The authors present a model describing how managers in an MNC facilitated transitions between sub-processes of organizational learning at several organizational levels.

The authors collected data from the plants of a global process company in Norway, Brazil and China. Observation, in-depth interviews and archival material enabled one to reconstruct the organizational learning process over a period of 30 years as the company developed its own tailor-made improvement programme.

Based on the data, the authors describe the role of leadership in linking the sub-processes of organizational learning as orchestration, sponsoring and persistence. Orchestration included creating faith and optimism and designing the organization to allow close cooperation between operators and managers in the sub-process of experimenting. This eased transferring and institutionalizing in the global organization. Sponsoring included structural changes to support transferring and the demonstration of dedication to improvement programme values. These factors were important for institutionalizing. Persistence involved the continuous focus on adjustment of the improvement programme, which then facilitated further experimenting.

Firstly, this study suggests that activities and decisions in one sub-process have important implications for the following sub-processes. Secondly, this study indicates that leaders’ role in facilitating the transitions between sub-processes extend beyond their individual traits and behaviour, which previous research had focused on, and includes decisions concerning organizational structure and culture that help link social and organizational learning.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Through actively involving themselves with their employees and fostering creativity, leaders can facilitate powerful organizational learning with transformative implications.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy- to-digest format.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds his/her own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

One of the more light-hearted interpretations of how to define organizational culture is to simply say. “It’s the way we do things around here”. This is illuminating and frustrating in equal measure, as while it does contain a kernel of truth - understanding how and why people take the positions and actions they do is central to the question of culture – it is also rather glib and is simply true of everywhere you might ask that question. It also points to a certain wariness and even defiance on behalf of the people answering the question in such a way, as if to challenge the newcomer into accepting how their world operates, and that it is never going to change.

This paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.