Critical realism and organizational learning

The potential for learning from good RRI practices and implications for the usefulness of RRI as an umbrella concept

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to analyze reported good institutional responsible research and innovation (RRI) practices from an organizational and learning perspective to discuss the usefulness of RRI as a broad umbrella concept.

Design/methodology/approach

This study connects neo-institutional and translation accounts of diffusion to different modes of learning and discusses reported best practices from 12 reports, including in total 23 organizations in the research system worldwide, in light of this theoretical framework. This study categorizes the good practices identified in the reports and discusses how the nature of the practices influences the potential learning from them. The authors then apply the results from the discussion of this study to current policy developments on RRI.

Findings

The two most often mentioned good practices overall are organizational policies and the establishment of organizational units, but the type of good practices recommended differs across the various aspects of the RRI umbrella concept. This diversity within the RRI construct is a practical argument against the effectiveness of RRI as an umbrella concept.

Originality/value

This study is novel in the fact that the authors, building on Wæraas (2020), systematically relate types of good practice to neo-institutional theory and translation perspectives explicitly combined with learning approaches and apply this approach in the field of research organizations. The policy implications from the empirical and theoretical analyses are novel and timely in these early phases of the EU funding framework programme Horizon Europe and can also be relevant for the increasingly important umbrella concept of Open Science.

Organizational learning through character-based judgment

We introduce character into organizational learning by building theory about how strength of individual character enhances organizational learning and how unbalanced or weak character undermine organizational learning. Bringing character into organizational learning theory helps to elucidate the type of judgment (i.e. character-based judgment anchored in all dimensions of character) that is missing but required in organizational learning to resolve organizational learning dilemmas that have persisted in the field. In connecting character to organizational learning, we rely on the multi-level processes of the 4I framework of organizational learning as scaffolding to theoretically introduce the processes of character activation, character contagion, and character embeddedness and discuss how the different character configurations and processes enhance organizational learning across levels in an organization.

The learning organization and organizational learning in the public sector: a review and research agenda

Purpose

This study aims to propose a new research agenda for the theories of “organizational learning” and the “learning organization” in relation to the public sector. The research agenda can be used by researchers to make explicit accounts of how and where the results from their studies advance the current state-of-the-art in the intersection between public sector and organizational learning and/or the learning organization.

Design/methodology/approach

A combined systematic and bibliometric review methodology is applied based on the research that has been published in the past three decades.

Findings

Through an analysis of 238 journal publications obtained from the Scopus database, the authors determine the leading authors, countries, highly cited papers and take the stock of current literature. Similarly, by analyzing papers published between 2010 and 2020, the authors identify current tendencies and emerging themes of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector and offer avenues for future research.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is potentially the first, fully refereed study published reporting on a bibliometric and a systematic review of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector.