Connecting firm-level learning with performance

Ambler, TFJ and Styles, C (2001) Connecting firm-level learning with performance. Working Paper. London Business School Centre for Marketing Working Paper.

Abstract

This paper links organizational learning with performance by synthesizing the existing literature with two additions, "animal spirits" and zerosum resources. The result is a measurable performance model. In line with the literature, the human analogue of the firm is assumed but this is extended to the firm's culture, a facilitator or blocker of learning. Information, learning and knowledge are presented as only having meaning relative to the firm's purpose and context. Measurement is obfuscated by these constructs not being subject to conventional arithmetic. The key to this proves to be running time backwards, i.e. it is used not to predict but to learn from history. This allows us to define learning in terms of the change of knowledge and information in terms of the change of learning. We finally suggest a path for further refinement and empirical testing, which, along with measurement, has been largely neglected.