Bibliographic review of organizational learning scales focusing process and outcomes, enablers, or learning and performance

Abstract

The objective was to analyze scales used to investigate organizational learning (OL), taking as reference the existing cleavages in the field (relationships between individual learning (IL) and OL, learning organization (LO), OL levels and their relationships, who learns, or phenomena of IL conversion into OL). The 24 selected scales were classified as: (1) focus on processes and learning outcomes; (2) focus on factors that facilitate learning; (3 focus on learning and performance. All 24 scales do not stimulate the association of subjects’ elicitations with concrete learning experiences. All these scales deal with generic and abstract learning processes, suggesting that respondents continually learn in their work environment, which seems to reflect the inexistence of barriers between work situations and learning. There is a trend toward parsimonious and multilevel scales, though few consider the inter-organizational level. The issue of transformation of Individual Learning (IL) into OL is still neglected by most of the scales that were revised, even by scales that focus on processes; the constructs of IL and OL are measured exclusively by self-perception; there is a relatively mismatch between OL and LO; and non-financial variables predominate as a method to measure the “performance” construct and use it as a dependent variable related to OL.

Keywords
Organizational learning; Individual learning; Group learning; Performance; Scales