Interorganizational Networks as Emerging Learning Organizations

Sammanfattning: As the topic of sustainability is gaining a lot of importance, organizations in the aviation industry are coming together to form networks. The purpose of the study is to understand the concept of inter-organizational networks as potential learning organizations and find out how facilitating processes that enable these inter-organizational networks like collaboration, communication and knowledge management operate within networks. Further research will explore processes of learning in networks to investigate alignment and resemblance with the concept of sustainable learning organization and provide an insight on organization structure and culture as enablers of learning. The basic design of the study consists of semi-structured interviews of two networks in the aviation industry as primary data in order to support research questions with empirical analysis. In addition, systematic review of academic literature and official websites of various network stakeholders was used as a secondary data collection source to discover track record of current research study in this field and identify knowledge gaps and areas for further study. Major findings include impact of formal and informal structure of networks on learning processes and objective setting for the network. It also depicts a need for a holistic and systematic approach at interorganizational level in order to form a learning organization. In the end culture was also identified as a learning enabler in networks that tend to be sustainable learning organizations.