Transferring Organizational Learning Practices

The objective of this study is to understand the transfer of organizational learning practices beyond national borders. The main research questions centre on the ways that organizations develop the competence of organizational learning for their overseas subsidiaries in a foreign environment. In particular, the emphasis is on how the learning practices at the shop floor level are shared, transmitted and adopted among the employees in the local units. Under the social construction perspective, learning in organization is a collective act that is shared among different members in the communities of practice. However, as each social and cultural community has gone through the unique patterns of social interactions to develop their particular ways of knowing, the learning practices that help distinguish them from other non-community members are somehow embedded in the social, organizational and cultural context. This raises the barriers for effective sharing and transfer of the knowing in practice from one community to another. Surprisingly, very few studies have been conducted to explore the process of crossnational and cross-cultural transfer of organizational learning practices.