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This paper aims to further our understanding of policy–practice gaps in organizations from an organizational learning perspective. The authors conceptualize and analyze policy–practice gaps in terms of what they label the dual challenge of organizational learning, i.e. the organizational tasks of both adapting ongoing practices to prescribed policy demands and adapting the policy itself to the needs of practice. Specifically, the authors address how this dual challenge can be understood in terms of organizational learning and how an organization can be managed to successfully resolve the dual learning challenge and, thereby, bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations.

This paper draws on existing literature to explore the gap between policy and practice. Through a synthesis of theories and an illustrative practical example, this paper highlights key conceptual underpinnings.

In the analysis of the dual challenge of organizational learning, this study provides a conceptual framework that emphasizes the important role of tensions and contradictions between policy and practice and their role as drivers of organizational learning. To bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations, this paper proposes five key principles that aim to resolve the dual challenge and accommodate both deployment and discovery in organizations.

Because this is a conceptual study, empirical research is called for to explore further and test the findings and conclusions of the study. Several avenues of possible future research are proposed.

This paper primarily contributes by introducing and elaborating on a conceptual framework that offers novel perspectives on the dual challenges of facilitating both discovery and deployment processes within organizations.

Although change is a necessary part of organisational life, achieving a successful change is complex. Change readiness is a critical element in successful change implementation, yet studies assessing change readiness as an underlying mechanism in the link between organisational-level factors and successful change implementation are scarce, particularly in the African context. Accordingly, the present study examined the extent to which change readiness mediates the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation in the Ghanaian context.

The study utilized a standardized questionnaire to collect data from 364 participants, working in public and private universities in Ghana. The participants were selected via the convenience sampling strategy to complete the survey on the main variables at a single point in time. The study was purely quantitative, as path analysis – a form of structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesized relationships in the study.

The results show that both learning organisation and change readiness facilitated successful change implementation. Finally, it was observed that change readiness served as an important mediating mechanism in the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation.

Change readiness was found to explain the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation. Thus, it is important that managers and leaders of public and private sector educational institutions in Ghana invest resources into preparing and getting employees to accept, be committed to and ready for change.

The present study contributes to the scarce knowledge of the mediating role of change readiness in the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation in the African context.

This study aims to increase the understanding of the starting points and presuppositions of organizational learning (OL) processes in a hospital’s surgical department based on the existing theory of OL and to make visible the practical possibilities of the theory in this context.

The study was conducted as a case study. The data were collected from personnel of the hospital’s surgical department and consisted of 26 thematic interviews. The data were analyzed using qualitative theory-driven content analysis.

This study found different starting points for both employee-oriented and organization-oriented learning processes that could potentially progress to different levels of the organization: from individuals to a wider group or from a large group to an individual. The starting point of employee-oriented learning processes was depicted as everyday life problems or situations or was based on the person’s interest. The starting points of organization-oriented learning processes were described as achieving or maintaining the organization’s expected skill levels, pursuing continuous development or pursuing the organization’s specific development needs. Different kinds of presuppositions were also located within the OL processes.

This study produced new practice-based knowledge about the starting points of OL processes and their presuppositions. In health-care organizations, learning is especially important due to intensive and complex changes, and this study provides empirical evidence on how to enhance learning.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the links between leaders' creation of knowledge in the setting of a leadership development program and the transfer of knowledge to their own organizations.

This is a case study of a leadership development program conducted during 2020–2022. The program was focused on how to lead and manage learning and knowledge processes in organizations, and offered a mix of theoretical perspectives and practical collaborative sessions. Data were collected through interviews and the participants' written reflections on their learning experiences. Total number of interviews was 13.

Overall the participants showed many examples of how they applied theories and practical tools that they had learned during the program in their own organizations. The participants experienced different types of challenges regarding knowledge transfer, but also potential meta-knowledge transfer through dialogue.

Pedagogical organizing of leadership development point to a need for supplementary dialogue between the leader of the development program and both the participating leader and manager.

This study shows that meta-knowledge transfer is not a simple matter of moving codified knowledge from the development program to new settings. Knowledge about others' knowledge requires and stimulates subject-to-subject relations between people through which new knowledge potential is created. These findings confirm and enhance previous studies that indicate the need for social support for soft-skill knowledge transfer.

If building and nurturing a learning organization is not a random chance, the question of where organizations should start is patent. Because learning culture is one of the core components of learning organizations, it is wondered how individuals and organizations contribute to this phenomenon. Under an interactional perspective, the authors explore the cross-dynamics between learning resources, structure and support (organizational level), and self-directed learning (individual level).

The authors conducted qualitative and exploratory research in Spring 2021 in France. They used semi-structured interviews with HRMs and a Delphi panel as the main instruments. This dual approach brings a reflexive and complementary dialogue to the research question.

The results show that non-learning organizations took advantage of the Covid-19 period. They created a learning biotope and fostered learning dynamics. Although this biotope acted as a learning marketplace and lacked guidance, individuals interacted with this learning biotope. They took learning initiatives and developed their self-directed learning. This understanding argues for constant interaction and co-influence between organizations and individuals to build and nurture a learning culture.

There is little discussion on how individuals and organizations contribute to building and nurturing a learning culture from an interactional perspective. Furthermore, literature on learning organizations considers self-directedness as a whole, considering self-directed learning as a characteristic and a process sharpens thinking. On methodological concerns, the authors used a dual qualitative approach with interviews and Delphi for the first time in research on learning organizations.

Employee training and learning have transformed over the years. The movement from classroom training to the blended format represents the magnitude of this evolution. This has placed much attention on self-regulated learning. This study aimed to understand the individual and organizational mechanisms that sustain the formal learning process in organizations. It explored the goals the organizations and employees strive to achieve by investing in learning. Through this, the authors investigated how technology assistance makes learning more goal-oriented, despite the possibility of different goals for different stakeholders. They also examined how person-job fit can be achieved in employee training.

The study adopted a grounded theory-based inductive approach using a qualitative inquiry that used in-depth interviews of employees working in the Indian IT/ITES sector. This sector is knowledge-intensive and engages in constant skill development. A content analysis of the interview transcripts unraveled the most relevant themes from the participants' discussion.

Individual learners use dimensions of self-regulated learning to set and achieve goals such as better performance and career development. On the other hand, organizations use learning support mechanisms such as better access and flexibility to direct employee learning behavior to achieve organizational goals. Focusing on goal congruence leads to better achievement of results. Goal congruence also implies good person-organization fit.

This research established how aligning individual and organizational mechanisms can help achieve training goals that ultimately contribute to organizational performance. The study differentiated itself by investigating training goal setting and goal achievement at two levels – organizational and individual – using a qualitative approach. It also showed how goal congruence is vital in improving organizational performance and how technology-enabled training practices rely on self-regulated learning and help achieve goal congruence.

This paper aims to examine how a social entrepreneurial organisation in Sweden collectively learned to adapt itself to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using an abductive approach, this study conducted single case fieldwork on a social entrepreneurial organisation called SFE. The following research questions were asked: What are the changes in collective learning conditions that SFE has to face during the pandemic? What are the outcomes of collective learning during the pandemic in SFE?

This study results indicate that collective learning conditions were changed by restructuring the organisation’s design and teamwork during the pandemic, which facilitated sharing of knowledge and experiences. This collective learning helped the organisation develop new virtual projects during the pandemic. Another result of this collective learning was the members’ new shared understanding of the organisation’s vision.

This study hopes to broaden the understanding of the relationship between collective learning in organisations and organisational adaptation in times of crisis.

This study can help leaders of social entrepreneurial organisations understand what changes are necessary to create a team that collectively learns.

The data had the advantage of being gathered as a real-time process, and the researcher witnessed how the organisation achieved adaptation as it happened and not just through its members’ reflection of it as a past phenomenon.

Executive isolation, also known as workplace loneliness, its factors and impact are major issues for organizational development, future of work for leadership and learning culture. The purpose of this study is to examine the Executive isolation phenomenon where relationships between power distance, organizational culture and executive isolation of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are analysed on how it is considered by their teams. The same is contextualized through the inputs received through interviews conducted with CEOs and employee surveys.

The qualitative in-depth interviews of five CEOs, and survey across 34 of the 50 employees, were undertaken over the course of two phases of this study. The investigation focused on identifying executive isolation of CEOs and perspectives of employees that can impact the leadership and learning progress of organizations based on work culture, power distance and decision-making; awareness and experience of executive isolation; workplace friendliness and rejection; and management development initiatives to minimize the impact of executive isolation. Qualitative data analysis was conducted using MAXQDA 2022 (Verbi Software, Berlin, Germany), which is a qualitative data analysis software.

The findings highlight and expose the significant gap between understanding and analysing of the factors due to which the CEOs undergo executive isolation. It also extends to providing details related to the lack of awareness of the teams’ actions contributing to the CEOs’ isolation. It further highlights the fact that the difference of perspectives between the CEOs and teams leads to the organization slowing in its learning activities due to the leaders’ own challenges of executive isolation The findings also provide immense need of developing knowledge assets and management development initiatives for learning interventions, to help understand, analyse and mitigate executive isolation, in the interest of the organizational learning and development.

Earlier research work have contextualized the executive isolation impact on CEOs ability to be a leader. This study extends it to include the implications of leadership and learning culture on the teams that are affected by organization culture, power distance, decision-making and analysing the gap between the understandings about executive isolation of the CEOs. Eventually, it interprets how CEOs courting the executive isolation impacts the overall developmental culture of the organization. This will help in asserting the serious need of new learning frameworks needed to minimize the impact of CEO-level executive isolation.

This study aims to examine the influence of the talent management (TM) process on employee ambidexterity (EA) and the moderating role of learning organizations in Indian IT and ITes organizations.

The study is descriptive and based on empirical data from 390 IT and ITES employees from India. Data were collected using three valid and reliable questionnaires. Data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings show that the TM process significantly impacted EA. The moderating effects of the four dimensions of learning organization (LO) on the relationship between the TM process and EA were also noteworthy, even though no direct association was found to be significant. Regarding demographic variables, male and female employees do not vary considerably in their perception of TM process and EA in LO.

The study’s novelty lies in creating and discussing a synthesis of exploration and exploitation stemming from EA in learning organization.

Drawing from organizational learning theory, social exchange theory and positive psychology approach, this study aims to examine the relationship between commitment to learning and prosocial silence, as well as the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in this relationship.

The authors used path analysis to examine the relationships between research variables. Data were collected from 275 employees of private sector companies in Turkey through an online survey platform. To test the proposed hypotheses, the authors conducted regression and mediation analyses using the bootstrapping method.

The results indicate that the organization’s commitment to learning positively and significantly impacts employee prosocial silence, and POS partially mediates this relationship.

Managers who aim to promote other-oriented and helping behavior in the organization should understand how prosocial silence can be golden. They should cultivate and model a learning mindset by focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses, reward experimentation and provide employees with timely feedback allowing them to think and reflect on their failures.

Although the dominant position of previous studies endorses the detrimental sides of organizational silence, less research has focused on employees’ prosocial silence behavior and the underlying mechanisms that may explain employees’ tendency to remain silent with helpful intent, a gap this research attempts to fill.