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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.

The ongoing challenge to sustain school learning and improvement requires schools to explore new ways, and at the same time exploit previous experience. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to expand the knowledge of mechanisms that can facilitate school learning processes by proposing boundary activities and learning mechanisms in which principals can engage to promote learning processes.

The authors refer to Bourdieu’s theoretical approach that human actions occur within fields of interaction. The authors delineate principals’ internal and external boundary activities as mechanisms for promoting school learning processes while acknowledging that principals are embedded within competing fields, encompassing demands from the economic, political, and even global fields. The authors discuss how the principal boundary activities can not only facilitate the exploitation of knowledge embedded in the school system, but also the exploration of external knowledge across multiple fields of interaction. The authors then present the principal learning mechanisms as complementary activities to school learning improvement.

Promoting school learning processes may require constant management of the school learning boundary so that the school neither becomes isolated from its environment nor loses its capacity for knowledge integration and exploitation. The boundary activities, combined with learning mechanisms, can enable the principal to balance these competing demands.

The organizational learning processes of exploration and exploitation have been under-investigated in the educational context, as to the role of the principal in balancing the tension between these processes. This study conceptualizes boundary activities and learning mechanisms, suggesting a framework through which principals can engage to promote school learning.

The firm’s structural inertia seems to be a crucial roadblock in continuous improvement efforts. The management paradigm shift required in the transition towards a continuous improvement culture is from individual‐based learning to system‐based learning. Explores the role of an organizational learning mechanism in overcoming the barriers for continuous improvement. Examines the implications of the creation of a parallel learning structure mechanism and its concomitant impact on continuous improvement in a paper mill firm over an eight‐year period. Concludes with the identification and discussion of some theoretical issues.

The traditional approach to building a corporate identity relies on a managerial advertising view and is conducted mainly by external consultancy companies. The aim of this study is to introduce a different approach to building a corporate identity that is based on an effective learning mechanism focused on internal stakeholders.

In‐depth interviews with senior bank management were conducted to determine the way in which a new corporate identity was designed and implemented. In addition, written documentation relating to the process of managing the identity was examined as a case study of a subsidiary of an Israeli bank.

The case demonstrates that designing an effective learning mechanism based on internal stakeholders' participation is crucial for the assimilation of a new corporate identity. It has also meaningful impact on increasing profitability and improving satisfaction both among workers and clients.

On the basis of this case study, a practical framework of designing and implementing a corporate identity is presented, based on learning objectives and a learning mechanism. This conceptual framework can serve managers interested in adopting a systemic and holistic approach to building a sustainable corporate identity as well as researchers who may use the framework for the study of companies who are in the process of changing their identity.

The study provides an important insight to the process of designing of corporate identity in the banking industry and better understanding of learning mechanisms that foster its assimilation.

A work system may be said to exhibit social sustainability if it utilizes its human, social, economic, and ecological resources with responsibility. This entails using these resources in a non-exploitive way, regenerating them, and paying due attention to the needs and ambitions of its stakeholders in the short- and long-term. For most presently existing organizations attaining and maintaining sustainability requires a midcourse correction, a transformation process. This chapter reviews the main concepts regarding sustainability and previous research of organizational development in this context. It presents a four-phase model for this transformation process and illustrates the model's application in four different contexts. The results are discussed and directions for further research are presented.

Since 1973, the pharmacy operations division of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program (KPMCP) has used long-term action research programs as the principal method for orchestrating change. This chapter covers the evolution of action research theory within large, complex organizations, with particular attention to health care organizations. Four case examples from KPMCP are discussed in depth and mapped to the recently advanced Roth model of insider action research. This model considers external and internal business context, the perceived need to create new organizational capabilities, as well as insider action research theory and learning mechanisms used in change programs. Issues posed by the Roth model are explored, and new theory is advanced regarding the need for a long-term perspective, the advantages and difficulties posed when managers act as insider action researchers, and the quality of data gathering that takes place during insider action research change programs.

This study aims to develop a process model that details the mechanisms and learning processes by which entrepreneurial learning transpires at multiple levels in the organization. Using the transactive memory system (TMS) framework as a reference, the model specifies how individual streams of knowledge are routinized in nonhuman elements and, over time, become embedded in organizational routines and procedures.

The research uses a case-study methodology building on 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews, 20 h of non-participative observations and internal company documents.

The study demonstrates that knowledge is channeled from individuals to the organization via mechanisms that operate at the venture-team level – principally externalizing distinctions; rotating task work; co-constructing the task; and routinizing behavior. These mechanisms are fundamental for creating knowledge repertoires on which team members can build and for channeling different knowledge domains into the organization.

The study offers a dynamic view of entrepreneurial learning, underlining the structural and transactive components of TMS as being foundational for embedding knowledge in organizational routines and procedures.

As humanitarian organizations often operate in highly volatile environments, a good understanding of their learning mechanisms would improve the knowledge acquisition and retention in these organizations, and complement the formal logistics education and training for their relief staff. The paper explores the following research question: what learning mechanisms are used by humanitarian organizations to acquire sufficient knowledge for their logistics operations.

The paper opts for a theoretical study based on the existing literature. We apply organizational learning theory to examine the learning process and mechanisms of humanitarian organizations. An actual case is used to validate the findings.

The study develops a theoretical framework for the learning mechanism of humanitarian organizations, and reports four learning mechanisms: learning by hiring, learning by doing, learning by observing, and learning by searching. Five propositions are proposed for empirical validation.

Because of the theoretical nature of the study, the research is still an exploratory one. The organization learning literature employed is not comprehensive. Researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper includes implications for humanitarian organization to better manage their learning processes, improve the effectiveness of their knowledge management, and benefit more disaster-affected people.

This paper fills a gap in the learning processes and knowledge management of humanitarian organizations.

The notion of organizational learning (OL) has reached the forefront of both school change discourse and academic inquiry. However, this notion has not yet undergone deliberate thinking and research within the special education domain. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the literature by empirically investigating OL through a structural concept – organizational learning mechanisms (OLMs) – as embedded into the learning values (culture) of special education.

A case study of three student's functioning levels (low, intermediate, and high) in a special education school provided the context for studying OLMs and the learning values (culture) influencing their productivity.

This paper supports the existence of and the capacity for systematic learning through institutionalized structures and procedures in a special education school. This paper also illuminates the effect of learning values (culture) on the effectiveness of OLMs in a special education school.

Generalizing from this case study (a special education school comprising three levels of student functioning) is quite problematic. However, this paper supports the merit of empirically researching OL in special education schools through the structural‐cultural framework.

This paper provides a useful conceptual and empirical framework to evaluate special education schools as learning organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a framework for the exploration of system transformation that includes leadership roles, contextual mess and triggering events, designing and managing sustainable learning mechanisms, managing a variety of balancing acts, creating shared understanding and, transforming shared understanding into action.

A five‐phased longitudinal research of one organization – Kibbutz Shefayim– during 12 years: semi‐structured interviews (60‐120 minutes each) with Kibbutz members representing a wide range of views and experiences in 1993; collecting and reviewing of Kibbutz internal “raw” documents that related to changes that occurred during the past 12 years, and; follow‐up semi structured interviews in 1998, 2001 and 2005. The interviewed members were asked to describe the nature of the changes that had taken place since the previous interview, including reasons, mechanisms, results and impacts.

The findings suggest that leading system change requires managerial orientation that is centered on balancing acts embedded in on going dialogue and the design of learning mechanisms. The paper advances a specific set of balancing acts and discusses their implications for leading system wide transformation.

This research was conducted within one organization. Further longitudinal replications in other Kibbutz‐based systems are under way.

The proposed view of leadership as a balancing act seems to capture the experience of many managers in the twenty‐first century. The findings suggest that some of the critical success factors for system‐wide transformation centers on the leaders' ability to sustain the following activities: continuous effort at bringing the outside forces into alignment with the internal forces; utilizing triggering events as levers for continuous change, and the purposeful design and management of learning mechanisms.

Adds to the literature on the exploration of system transformation and includes leadership roles, contextual mess and triggering events, designing and managing sustainable learning mechanisms, managing a variety of balancing acts, creating shared understanding and, transforming shared understanding into action.