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State of the organizational
learning field in Latin America
and the Caribbean: research
methods and themes
Jane Lucia Silva Santos
School of Technology, PUCRS’Science and Technology Park,
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Andrea Valéria Steil
Department of Psychology, Post-Graduate Program in Psychology and
Post-Graduate Program in Engineering and Knowledge Management,
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florian
opolis, Brazil, and
David Joaquin Delgado-Hernández
School of Engineering, Universidad Aut
onoma del Estado de México,
Toluca, México
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main methods and themes used on organizational
learning (OL) and learning organization (LO) research in Latin American and the Caribbean.
Design/methodology/approach –A literature review was conducted by means of a broad and
systematic strategy to locating, selecting and analyzing papers on OL/LO, written in different languages
(English, Portuguese and Spanish). Systematic searches were carried out at the two databases (Web of
Science’s Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus), and 15 specific Latin American and Caribbean journals
were identified as data sources for the review. A thematic analysis was carried out using NVivo and cluster
analysis.
Findings –In all 79 papers published between 2000 and 2017 were included in the synthesis and results: 18
are theoretical papers and literature reviews and 61 are empirical papers (30 qualitative, 24 quantitative and 7
multiple methods). These empirical papers revealed the study of the OL/LO concepts in organizations located
mainly in Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico and Costa Rica. Five topics represent the
main themes addressed on OL/LO studies in Latin America and the Caribbean and are avenues for future
research in the field: (i) knowledge and KM (i.e. knowledge management), (ii) culture and leadership, (iii)
innovation and improvement, (iv) learning (for example, learning process, learning styles), and (v)
entrepreneurship and sustainability.
Originality/value –This paper provides a summary of the research methods and themes used in the OL/
LO field in Latin America and the Caribbean, suggesting insights for future research.
Keywords Organizational learning, Learning organization, Latin American, Caribbean
Paper type Literature review
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main methods and themes used on
organizational learning (OL) and learning organization (LO) research in Latin American and
the Caribbean. Notwithstanding the fact that Latin American and the Caribbean
Research
methods and
themes
Received 22 January2019
Revised 22 January2019
Accepted 22 January2019
The Learning Organization
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0969-6474
DOI 10.1108/TLO-01-2019-0023
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0969-6474.htm
contributions on the topics have grown in size and complexity (Antonello and Godoy, 2009;
Santos and Steil, 2015), most of the understanding about the constructs is based on
knowledge from academic and practitioner literature performed in North America and
Europe (Dodgson, 1993;Easterby-Smith et al.,2009;Argote, 2011;Berends and
Antonacopoulou, 2014). This is potentially problematic to the development of OL theories
(Crossan et al., 2011) since cultural contexts play an important role on how organizations are
structured. Hinings and Greenwood (2002, p. 416) have already aptly stated that
organizations “are not separable from the sociocultural context that they shape and to which
they respond”. Latin American and the Caribbean countries constitute a rapidly growing
and influential region of the world. They have a combined population exceeding 600 million
people and are major providers of strategic commodities to the world (i.e. iron, cooper, and
zinc). The region also represents an important market for manufacturers, and its companies
are partners to major players around the world (Nicholson, 2011).
Most literature reviews on OL and LO to date focused on the analysis of the accumulated
knowledge on OL/LO regardless of the specific sociocultural context were the research was
developed. For instance, Bapuji and Crossan (2004) reviewed 123 OL papers published on
the web of science database during the period 1990-2002. The main criteria to select the
papers was the number of citations of OL papers published in journals indexed by the web
of science database, the most highly cited articles were those predominantly published in
North American journals. Bapuji and Crossan (2004, p. 409) recognize that the results they
described in their review were limited by the “accuracy of our citation search method”.
Easterby-Smith et al. (2009) reviewed the methods used in empirical OL papers published
in eight UK and USA journals between 1988 and 2007. These journals were selected based
on:
quality (measured by the presence of the journal in selected citation lists);
number of articles on OL (preferably journals with large numbers of articles on OL);
editorial roots and control of the journal based exclusively in the UK or the USA;
and
focus on empirical research (journals that did not accept empirical pieces were
excluded).
In another literature review, Berends and Antonacopoulou (2014) analyzed 75 papers
dealing with the time dimension of OL. To locate the papers they used a more extensive,
systematic search on Web of Science and Google Scholar. More recently, Basten and
Haamann (2018) conducted a narrative review on the approaches for OL. They recognized
the potential bias of this kind of review and tried to overcome this by performing searches
for papers in a comprehensive set of databases, including the electronic library of The
Association for Information Systems, ProQuest, IEEE Digital Library, ACM Digital Library,
Science Direct and EBSCOhost.
As the purpose of our paper is to summarize the main methods and themes used on OL/
LO research in Latin American and the Caribbean, we developed a broad and systematic
strategy to minimize bias in locating, selecting and coding individual papers. To reach this
goal, papers on OL/LO published in Journals from Latin American and the Caribbean
Countries, written in different languages (English, Portuguese and Spanish) were analyzed.
Of interest were also papers on OL/LO authored by researchers from Latin America and the
Caribbean published in journals from other regions and papers on OL/LO describing
research performed on organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean, regardless of
the country of affiliation of their authors.
TLO
Locating and reviewing research on OL/LO performed by Latin American and the
Caribbean researchers or that used data from Latin American and the Caribbean
organizations is important for understanding the contextual literature on OL/LO and
progress of the field.
Methodology
This structured review of literature encompasses scientific production of Latin America and
Caribbean (LA-C countries) on OL and LO research field. Procedures and techniques based
on bibliometrics and systematic review were adopted. The analyses enable statistics of
records and bibliographic information, therefore allowing the analysis of the scientific body
of knowledge on a given subject, departing from analysis of bibliographic data and
visualization of information (Karlsson et al.,2015).
The review process was structured following the main steps defined by Tranfield et al.
(2003):
Planning the review includes defining the question/objective of the research, and
choosing the database/journals.
Conducting a review (systematic search) includes data collection, selection and
analysis. In this step keywords/search terms, criteria for identification and selection
(inclusion or exclusion) of the literature are used, as well as discussions within the
review team.
Reporting includes descriptive analysis of the field, and reports the findings of the
thematic analysis (to identify key emerging themes from literature).
The main data sources, that include specific journals and online databases, were identified
during the planning stage. It was intentionally decided to consider a broad scope, so we
defined a question that could guide an extensive review of the literature on the topic: “What
are the key themes, research approaches, and insights that have been gained from the
studies on OL and LO in Latin America and the Caribbean?”.
Subsequently, the Web of Science’s Social Sciences Citation Index (WoS-SSCI) was
selected as the first data-source. The reason of choosing WoS-SSCI database was its
relevance to the academic community and its extensive collection of journals reviewed by
representative peers from the social science fields (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010). While
carrying out the searches, the whole time period covered by the WoS-SSCI database was
considered: from 1956 to October 2017 (when the search was performed). It was only used
the word “learning”, in order to increase the possibility of recovering all studies related to
OL and LO, since both terms/topics may present variations and be used in different ways in
the papers. Thus, the research on WoS-SSCI was carried out by searching papers with the
word “learning”in title; document type “article”or “review”(we excluded book-review,
editorial, proceedings, focusing on scholarly published articles); subject area (all areas
related to management/business and economics: management, economics, business, public
administration and business finance); and language English, Portuguese, and Spanish. In
order to filter studies performed in Latin America and Caribbean countries by researchers
with institutional affiliation (country of origin) in those regions, only the studies written by
authors affiliated to any Latin American or Caribbean country (such as Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru,
Uruguay, Venezuela, among others). In addition to that, were selected studies published in
journals that, regardless of its nationality (control of the journal), used both terms “learning”
Research
methods and
themes
in TITLE and “Caribbean”OR “Latin America”in TOPIC (title, abstract and keywords).
Through this procedure, 155 papers were found in WoS-SSCI.
Similarly to what was done in WoS-SSCI, searches were carried out in Scopus database:
the word “learning”in title, document type “article”or “review”, subject area “business,
management and accounting”, and language English, Portuguese, and Spanish. A total of
353 papers were found which, afterward, were filtered by country/territory (that used both
terms “learning”in TITLE and “Caribbean”OR “Latin America”in TOPIC). A total of 367
papers were found throughScopus database.
As this review is focused on academic literature on OL and LO in the Latin American and
Caribbean countries, we chose to additionally search specific indexed journals from these
regions. The strategy used to identify those journals involved two mechanisms:
(1) the list of journals classified in JCR –Journal Citation Reports; and
(2) the list of journals classified in SJR –SCImago Journal Rank.
Journals were filtered in both mechanisms, according to the ranking evaluation of the last
available year at the moment of the research (year 2017) and the countries. 15 journals were
identified by considering the categories “business, business finance, management”,and
countries Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Uruguay,
Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica (and so on for each Latin America and Caribbean countries).
Papers (articles and reviews) that included “learning”in topic (title, abstract and key words)
were identified and selected, regardless of the authors’country of origin, resulting in a total of
308 papers from Latin American and Caribbean journals (LA-C journals).
Hereafter, different reviewers read titles and abstracts of the papers found in WoS-SSCI
(155 papers), Scopus (367 papers) and LA-C journals (308 papers), aiming to discard articles
that were not related to “organizational learning”or “learning organization”(the complete
text was examined when the abstract was unclear about the thematic approach). By these
criteria, papers that used the term “learning”related to distance learning, entrepreneurial
learning, project-based learning, learning tools, teaching-learning process, technological
learning, virtual learning environments, and similar topics, were excluded. From the
analysis of titles and abstracts, 120 papers were included (23 papers from WoS-SSCI, 68
from Scopus database, and 29 papers from LA-C journals).
When necessary, alignment meetings were held to discuss the inclusion or exclusion of a
paper. Once the reading of the three groups of papers (from WoS-SSCI, Scopus and LA-C
journals) was carried out, individually and in different times, the selected 120 papers were
organized in a single database, after discarding 30 articles that were repeated. Therefore, a
total of 90 papers were left for a thorough reading and analysis. Among them, the reviewers
identified 11 articles that only approached “learning”in individual analysis or by country/
city/territory, so they were discarded after some discussions. After a deep and complete
reading, 79 articles were included in the review. This set was used as a base for all further
analysis. To this end, some key information was detached, organized, analyzed and
synthesized in an electronic matrix. The derived results will be exposed in the next section.
Figure 1 presents a summary of the systematic search process conducted to carry out
this literature review.
Results
The process of identification, screening, and analysis of eligibility resulted in 79 papers
included in this synthesis. Sixty-one of them are empirical, and eighteen are theoretical
papers and literature reviews.
TLO
Eligible papers were almost equally published in management journals from Latin America
and the Caribbean measured by SJR (40 papers) and mainstream international Journals that
published articles onOL/LO from Latin America and Caribe orwith research on OL/LO with
organizations of these regions (39 papers), as shown in Table I. Regional journals with
papers on OL/LO are from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. These are open
access journals in business, management, technology, innovation, and related areas.
The Learning Organization was the non-Latin American and the Caribbean journal that
published more papers on OL/LO from Latin America and the Caribbean (five papers),
followed by Journal of Business Research (three papers) and International Journal of
Production Research (two papers) (Table I). Others Non-Latin American and Caribbean
Journals published one paper on OL/OL in Latin America and the Caribbean, for example:
African Journal of Business Management, European Journal of Innovation Management,
Human Resource Management, Intangible Capital, International Journal of Knowledge, and
Journal of Knowledge Management.
Figure 1.
Summary of the
review process
308 papers
From specific LA-C Journals
367 papers
From Scopus database
30 papers were excluded from
reading tles and abstracts
Search boundaries 1
Online database search:
Web of Science - Social Sciences
Citation Index (WoS-SSCI)
Search: “learning” in TITLE
Document type: article or review
(excluded: book review, editorial,
etc.)
Origin: Latin America and Caribbean
countries
Cover period: all years (until October
16, 2017 - date of last search)
Search boundaries 2
Online database search: Scopus
Search: “learning” in TITLE
Document type: article or review
(excluded: book review, editorial,
etc.)
Subject areas: Business, Management
and Accounting
Origin: Latin America and Caribbean
countries
Cover period: all years (until October
18, 2017 - date of last search)
Search boundaries 3
Latin America and Caribbean
Journals (LA-C Journals)
Journals filtered by*: SJR
(SCImago)[14 journals] and JCR [4
journals] LA and Caribbean Countries
Search: “learning” in TITLE,
ABSTRACT OR KEY-WORDS
Document type: article and review
(excluded: book review, editorial,
etc.)
Origin of paper: Any country
155 papers
From Web of Science database
120 papers included (from analysis of titles and abstracts)
23 papers
From Web of Science database
68 papers
From Scopus database
29 papers
From specific LA-C Journals
90 papers included
11 papers were excluded from
analysis of the full texts
79 papers
included in the review
Reading, analysis and synthesis of the papers (full texts) by three reviewers
Elimination of duplicates
Notes: *Journals filtere dby: SJR(Scientific Journal Rankings-SCImago), 2015; Categories:
b
usiness, management and accounting; Origin: Latin America and Caribbean Countries
[14 journals]; and Journals filtered by: JCR(Journal Citation Reports), 2015; Categories:
b
usiness, business finance, management; Origin: Latin America and Caribbean Countries
[4journals]
Research
methods and
themes
After describing the when and where of the 79 publications, it is time to delve into the
preferred methods of the 61 empirical papers in the sample, according to the classification
by Easterby-Smith et al. (2009).Table II summarizes these empirical papers. The 18
theoretical papers and literature reviews were not considered.
Table I.
Journals that
published articles on
OL/LO from Latin
America and the
Caribbean
Journals Country SJR
**
No. of papers
Espacios Venezuela 0,156 18
Journal of Technology Management and Innovation Chile 0,247 7
Gestão e Produção Brazil 0,193 5
Brazilian Administration Review Brazil 0,188 3
Innovar: Revista de Ciencias Administrativas y Sociales Colombia 0,137 2
Cuadernos de Administraci
on Colombia 0,111 2
Revista de Administração de Empresas Brazil 0,207 1
Contaduria y Administracion Mexico 0,103 1
Revista Venezolana de Gerencia Venezuela 0,120 1
Subtotal 40
Learning Organization
*
United Kingdom 5
Journal of Business Research
*
Netherlands 3
International Journal of Production Research
*
United Kingdom 2
Other journals
*
(1 paper published in each of these journals) Others 29
Subtotal 39
Total 79
Notes:
*
Non-Latin American and Caribbean Journals that published papers on OL/LO from Latin America
and the Caribbean;
**
SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) year 2015 in the categories business, management and
accounting
Table II.
Research designs of
the empirical articles
on OL/LO in Latin
America and the
Caribbean
Research Design Total Articles (%)
Data Source
Primary data
*
57 93
Secondary data
*
47
Total 61 100
Data Collection Techniques
Qualitative 30 49
Quantitative 24 39
Multiple methods 7 11
Simulation/experiment 0 0
Total 61 100
Depth or Width of Study
Single case 21 34
Multiple case 9 15
Single industry 20 33
Multiple industries 11 18
Total 61 100
Notes: Primary data refers to original data collected for a specific research goal. Secondary data refers to
“data originally collected for a different purpose and reused for another research question”(Hox and Boeije,
2005, p. 593). “Secondary data”do not mean “literature”. The secondary data used in the reviewed papers
were mainly government provided data, quantitative databases or organizational records
TLO
The majority of empirical studies carried out by Latin American and the Caribbean authors
or published in Latin America and the Caribbean journals relied on primary data (93 per
cent). This is the same percentage found in papers on OL published in UK journals,
described in a literature review by Easterby-Smith et al. (2009).
The use of primary data is adequate to investigate relations between variables and to
understand such process constructs as OL and the LO. Collecting information specifically
for the purpose of the study and directly from the relevant source of information is indeed
paramount for understanding such multidimensional constructs as OL/LO.
Results also show that qualitative research on OL/LO in Latin America and the
Caribbean outnumbered quantitative research (qualitative: 49 per cent, quantitative: 39 per
cent), as shown in Table II. Most qualitative studies were single case studies (n= 21),
followed by multiple case studies (n= 9). Out of 24, 23 quantitative studies were surveys.
Only 10 per cent of papers described mixed-methods studies.
Nearly half of the empirical studies on OL/LO in Latin America and the Caribbean or
published by authors from institutions of these regions were case studies (49 per cent of all
empirical studies). Most of these were single case studies (34 per cent of all case studies).
Brazil was by far the focus of the majority of single case studies (with 15 of the 21 single
cases, or 71 per cent) and of multiple cases (with 5 out of 9 studies, or 55 per cent). Single
cases studied more than once are higher education institutions, oil companies and national
institutes. Other single cases studied are football clubs, oil companies, hospitals, navy, steel
meals, automotive parts plants, banks and training programs. Multiple cases were
performed in the automobile industry, cosmetics organizations and footwear companies.
Other multiple cases did not specify the sector or industry.
Studies in single industries made up 33 per cent of the empirical studies, compared to 18
per cent of studies in multiple industries. Single industries studied included digital TV,
biotechnology, ceramic, national institutes, higher education, wine sector, hospitality, food
retail, manufacturing, solidary economic firms, and technology. These organizations were
located in Brazil, Spain, Italy, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica
and Korea. Some studies did not specified the country or the industry investigated.
Countries with the multiple industries studies on OL/LO were performed include Brazil,
Colombia, Hong Kong, Argentina, Australia, China, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Poland,
South Africa, USA, Spain, Canada, France, and Romania. These multiple industries orsector
studied are manufacturing, engineering services, testing laboratories, consulting and
vocational training, industrial packaging, apparel, consumer durable, industrial chemical,
transportation, communication, and finance.
The eighteen are theoretical papers and literature reviews address various topics.
Table III shows the key topics and an example article.
Thematic analysis
Since the complete text of the 79 articles had been written in different languages (49 English,
19 Portuguese, and 11 Spanish) the thematic analysis was performed by word counting on
English titles and abstracts. The thematic analysis was carried out using NVivo, software
for qualitative data analysis. Abstracts and titles were considered individually and
emergent topics were identified through an inductive-narrative codification process,
regarding most frequent words that were automatically counted. Although this method has
some recognized weaknesses (Pittaway et al.,2004;Pittaway and Cope, 2007), such as being
dependent on the quality of abstracts that sometimes do not totally reflect the article
contents, it is useful to review individual topics trough a collection of articles and also to
generate a thematic structure that allows a detailed examination.
Research
methods and
themes
Key Topics Example Paper
Origin
Countries Description
Learning organization;
Institutional learning
Petrizzo Paez (2008) Venezuela A theoretical paper. Based on the Senge’sfive disciplines the author
developed her arguments about institutional learning
Individual learning and OL;
and intrapreneurship
Molina and Callahan
(2009)
Chile and USA A conceptual paper (theoretical framework). Based on theory (individual
learning and OL), the authors develop their model of intrapreneurial
learning and performance
Organizational learning and
Knowledge management
Loss, Pereira-Klen
and Rabelo (2010)
Brazil and
France
A conceptual paper (theoretical framework). Organizational learning and
knowledge management are main elements presented as part of the
framework for learning collaborative networked organizations
Learning and Innovation Lazzarotti et al. (2011) Brazil Bibliometric study (identifying papers related with the theme Innovation
within four renowned international journals). Results have shown an
expansion of the concept of innovation, and an increase on the occurrences
of the themes “organizational resources, capabilities and competencies,
knowledge and learning"
Organizational learning,
Learning organization, and
Knowledge management
Pun and Nathai-
Balkissoon (2011)
Trinidad and
Tobago
Based on the literature review (18 studies from ProQuest databases
between 1996 and 2009), a total of 14 selected knowledge management
(KM)/ OLOL models and frameworks were evaluated. Systems approaches,
culture, and the LO and chaordic organization/ enterprise (CO/CE) concepts
are among the most popularly cited factors for the development of a
holistic model
Learning and social capital;
Entrepreneurship
Andrade et al. (2011) Brazil A conceptual paper (theoretical framework). From the review are generated
propositions. A “model to understand the social family capital
phenomenon dimension, which influences the process of learning,
innovation and organizational change in family business”is developed (p.
12820). The assumptions were established by the family social capital
present in a family business, linking it as an independent variable in
relation to learning, change and innovation. Family businesses that
develop the family social capital are used to facilitate organizational
development characterized as entrepreneurial family businesses
Learning and Knowledge
creation
Gil and Carrillo (2013) Mexico and
Spain
A theoretical paper. The paper provides a critical review on approaches
that address knowledge creation, and presents a model of creation and
transfer knowledge in organizations through OL and LO concepts
Table III.
Theoretical papers or
literature reviews on
OL/LO in Latin
America and the
Caribbean
TLO
Key words were extracted from titles and abstracts of the 79 articles via automatic
codification. Initially, 14413 occurrences were identified for a total of 1341 words (with
minimum length 5 and with stemmed words and synonyms), among which, the 200 most
frequent words in the reviewed titles and abstracts were filtered. Hereafter, the most
representative 25 words were manually filtered, being excluded words without thematic
meaning, such as “study”,“paper”,“organizational”,“development”,“important”,“based”
and others. The words “for”,“or”,“in”,“what”,“where”,“how”,“the”and similar function
words were also excluded. Those 25 words previously mapped were then submitted to
cluster analysis in order to define the macro themes from reviewed papers. As can be
observed from Figure 2, those key words that represent the papers were clustered in five
general themes.
Figure 2.
Thematic analysis of
the studies on OL/LO
in Latin America and
the Caribbean
Research
methods and
themes
Arranging them in descending order, with regard to their frequency of occurrence, the
thematic are: Learning (with a total amount of 127 occurrences); Innovation and
Improvement (71 occurrences); Knowledge and KM-Knowledge Management (37
occurrences); Culture and Leadership (30 occurrences); and Entrepreneurship and
Sustainability (22 occurrences).
The thematic “learning”is composed/represented by the following words: OL, learning
process (including organizational unlearning, e.g. Muller et al., 2017), LO, learning flows,
learning styles, learning capacity, and individual learning. Papers representative of this
theme are those that put an emphasis on OL as a dynamic and multilevel process (that
occurs at individual, group and organizational levels) by means of stocks and flows of
learning in organizations. Some of those studies use the 4I processes as a conceptual
framework, originally developed by Crossan et al. (1999). Among these articles are: Cardoso
and Caballero (2013) that, based on the 4I framework, studied OL during the co-management
process between an Italian multinational company and a Brazilian sport industry; and
Santos and Steil (2015) that analyzed OL processes and power dynamics in a Brazilian
public organization, stating that political and power aspects are key elements for the
understanding of OL (with a multilevel approach) in public organizations. Other existent
approaches to this theme are present in articles on LO (for example, Chebbi and Pündrich,
2015), learning capacity/capability, exploration/exploitation learning (for example, Marin-
Idarraga, 2017), and individual learning (Molina and Callahan, 2009).
It is noticeable that articles on “learning organization”generally associate this concept
with corporation improvement processes, outcomes, and learning performance. Both in
theoretical articles (Pun and Nathai-Balkissoon, 2011) and in empirical articles (such as
Oprime et al.,2010;Tortorella et al., 2015) on the subject, the focus seems to be on the
identification or analysis of the features that a company must have in order to be a “learning
organization”and the mechanisms and practices for promoting learning and, therefore,
generating positive results. Consequently, this line of research (such as Chebbi and
Pündrich, 2015, that analyzed LO during a crisis) presents itself as a promising path for
future studies. The deep analysis of the context-depending nature of LOs may raise
questions in the field of learning about the role of the background and the elements that are
beyond the scope and control of the organization.
Articles on “individual learning”seek to link this concept to organizationallevel learning.
In other words, although those works are focused on individual level learning, the concept is
not separately considered. Molina and Callahan (2009), for example, proposes a conceptual
model called “intrapreneurship learning”to examine the connections between individual
learning, intrapreneurship and organization learning . The emphasis is on the central role
that individuals have in organization learning as agents of change and knowledge creation.
Future research may explore the relationships between environmental factors (external,
internal, physical, cultural, political), individual learning, intrapreneurship, creativity and
other constructs.
The second theme in the ranking is “innovation and improvement”(with a total amount
of 71 occurrences). This theme is represented by words related to innovation, continuous
improvement and performance. They were identified in the titles and abstracts from the
selected articles, as explained above. They are: continuous improvement processes,
innovation (including “innovation performance”), organizational performance, process
integration, product development process, production processes, and project
management. In general, studies on this topic either approach innovation as a process (new
product development, for example) or as a result (innovation performance, for example); the
project management and the quality management and principally continuous improvement
TLO
processes. As it was observed in academic works, some of these themes have been naturally
associated. For instance, according to Araujo et al. (2015,p.483)“one contribution of total
quality management to innovation literature is related to continuous improvement”.
Continuous improvement is one of the core themes for studying the LO. Articles that
explicitly link learning to innovation are also representative of this theme, for example
learning and business model innovation process (Sosna et al.,2010), innovation and learning
process in a Brazilian cluster (Saraceni and Andrade, 2012), OL and innovation performance
(Hernandez-Espallardo et al., 2012), and others. There is an array of possibilities for this line
of research. For example, future empirical studies might identify which specific processes of
OL are more linked to innovation performance and which variables can be moderators or
mediators in the relationship between organization learning and innovation in different
organization backgrounds, or analyze the relationship between organization learning,
absorptive capacity (or other constructs) and innovation; and so on.
The third theme in the ranking is “knowledge and KM”(with a total amount of 37
occurrences). This theme is represented by the following words: explicit knowledge, tacit
knowledge, knowledge processes (including knowledge creation, knowledge
sharing, knowledge socialization and knowledge transfer), knowledge system,
organizational knowledge, knowledge intensive organization and the work knowledge
management-KM. In general, the majority of the studies on this topic are those that directly
approach knowledge management in relation to OL in a conceptual way (for example, Pun
and Nathai-Balkissoon, 2011) or from empirical studies (Farias et al.,2009) and/or LO (Pun
and Nathai-Balkissoon, 2011;Newman and Newman, 2015); and those papers that link
learning to knowledge creation (Gil and Carrillo, 2013;Vargas et al., 2016), knowledge
sharing (Aizpurua et al.,2011) and organizational knowledge (Loss et al.,2010). There are
also studies that use a learning perspective as one of the dimensions considered in the
implementation diagnosis of a KM program (Ribeiro and Stano, 2010) or specifically focus
on “knowledge intensive organization”(Schardosim et al.,2017). Following this line, future
works might focus on “knowledge intensive organizations”from a perspective of LO or
ambidextrous organizations. The detailed analysis of new association possibilities between
research fields of KM and OL/LO is still an open challenge.
The forth theme in the ranking is “culture and leadership”(with a total amount of 30
occurrences), which is represented by the following words: organizational culture, cultural
management, management practices (including “human resources management practices”),
and leadership. Tortorella and Fogliatto (2014) and Tortorella et al. (2015), for example,
discussed the relevance of human resources management practices for LOs, and the study
by Gomez and Ranft (2003,p.989)“revealed a range of human resource management
policies that seem to affect the success of a learning approach”in manufacturing firms in
Mexico. To understand how different management practices may either ease or hinder
learning processes in organizations is a promising OL/LO research path. There are works
that follow a different direction seeking to bring closer OL and organizational culture. Sanz-
Valle et al. (2011) article, for example, analyses the determinant role of organizational culture
in the processes of OL and the results of the empirical study conducted in 451 companies
showed that organizational culture can foster OL but also can become a barrier for
corporation¨s learning and innovation. It suggests that there are opportunities to carry out
more studies to deeply examine the role of organizational culture in learning processes of
different backgrounds.
The fifth theme in the ranking is “entrepreneurship and sustainability”(with a total
amount of 22 occurrences). This theme has two central topics and the related articles seek to
link learning to entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship or learning to sustainability. A
Research
methods and
themes
representative study of this approach is the article by Gavronski et al. (2012) which analyzes
the relationships between OL and environmental technologies (pollution prevention,
pollution control, environmental management systems); and the conceptual paper developed
by Molina and Callahan (2009), that seeks to associate intrapreneurship and learning
(individual and organizational) and aims to follow that line of research that suggests that
intrapreneurship contributes to a better organizational performance. “In this framework,
individual and OL combine to offer a unique perspective on the link between
intrapreneurship and organizational performance”(Molina and Callahan, 2009,p.388).
Future research may empirically examine the role of OL in the relationship between
intrapreneurship and organizational performance. Following Andrade et al. (2011), future
studies may also focus on learning, change and innovation in family business.
Conclusions
Having carried out a review of the scientific literature available in well-known databases
such as WoS-SSCI and Scopus, a total of 79 papers were identified for analysis. This is
admittedly incomplete, but hopefully useful as OL/LO reference list in this part of the world.
The review revealed the use of the OL/LO concepts in organizations working on
biotechnology, ceramic, food retail, higher education, hospitality, manufacturing, national
institutes, solidary economic firms, technology, and wine sector. These companies were,
mainly, in Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico andCosta Rica.
The results showed five themes –entrepreneurship and sustainability, innovation and
improvement, learning, culture and leadership, and knowledge and knowledge
management –which represent the main themes addressed on OL/LO studies in the Latin
American and the Caribbean.
From a practical viewpoint, the results of the study can be useful for academics and
practitioners. The first can use them as a basis for further investigations in the OL/LO. The
latter, in contrast, may identify the areas in the region that are being investigated and use
the reported papers as benchmarks to improve their OL/LO practices.
Therefore, this paper provides a summary of the research methods and themes used in
the OL/LO field in the Latin America and the Caribbean. This piece of research can be
completed in the future with the incorporation of new studies and analyzes about the
subject.
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Corresponding author
Jane Lucia Silva Santos can be contacted at: janejlss@gmail.com
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Research
methods and
themes