Measuring Organizational Learning as a Multidimensional Construct

IntroductIon The traditional way of measuring learning as a result has been through the so-called learning and experience curves. The learning curves, developed within the production framework (Levitt & March, 1988), relate the manufacturing cost of a product to the accumulated experience in its production. This establishes that its cost decreases as the number of units made increases. At first, although this relationship was limited to the direct labour cost, it later extends to the total production cost. In the 70s, the Boston Consulting Group applied this idea to the manufacturing sectors with experience curves. These curves expand the learning effect to activities other than those typical of production (Albernathy & Wayne, 1974). They describe the influence that experience acquired through the repetition of a specific activity has on the variable cost and/or price. Another form of learning evaluation is the half-life curves that measure the time taken in obtaining an improvement of 50% in a determined measurement performance: The greater slope curves indicate a faster learning (Garvin, 1993). These systems of evaluation are, nevertheless , incomplete for a learning organization. The cognitive level, changes in conduct, and its influence on performance improvement must be taken into account in assessing a company's learning. Surveys, questionnaires, and interviews are, in this case, more useful (Garvin, 1993). The research has, however, advanced with great slowness due to two matters: first, as a result of the complexity and multidimensional nature of the object of study; second, the absence of a solid common starting-point, caused by the theoretical disagreement that exists concerning the very definition of the concept and its dimensions. In this line, organization learning (OL), as multidimensional construct, has been analyzed through the dimensions related to the OL capability, according to a series of phases that define a sequential time process, or by means of a knowledge-creation process.