Organizational learning and organizational innovation: evidence from electronics businesses in Thailand.

• Author: Ussahawanitchakit, Phapruke
• Position: Report - Survey

1. INTRODUCTION

   Recently, organizational learning has played a significant role in explaining and determining business phenomena. It has explicitly had an influence on relationship orientation, market orientation, logistics service effectiveness, brand performance, and performance. Likewise, there are several factors that affect firms' organizational learning in the competitive markets concerning information technology, knowledge inertia, leadership, and personal mastery. Thus, organizational learning becomes an interesting issue which researchers and executives have attempted to clearly study and understand its concepts and potentially investigate its roles, functions and activities in the business operations. Here, organizational learning refers to organization-wide activities of creating and using knowledge to enhance competitive advantage through obtaining and sharing information about customer needs, market changes, and competitor actions and the ingrained intra-organizational culture and values towards learning manifested (Panayides, 2007).

   Organizational learning is also defined as a dynamic process of knowledge creation generated at the heart of the organization via its individuals and groups, directed at the generation and development of distinctive competencies that enable the organization to improve its performance and results (Real et al., 2006). It consists of commitment to learning, open-mindedness and shared vision (Santos-Vijande et al., 2005). For the benefits of organizational learning, organizational learning is a key driver of establishing and developing innovations in the organization. Accordingly, organizational learning has an outstanding impact on organizational innovation (Garcia-Morales et al., 2007). Firms with greater organizational learning tend to enhance organizational innovation to achieve business success. Then, organizational learning is hypothesized to have an influence on organization innovation. It is a change in the structure and processes of an organization due to implementing new managerial and working concepts and practices (Armbruster et al., 2008).

   In this study, the relationships between organizational learning and organizational innovation are investigated. To clearly verify the aforementioned relationships, electronics businesses in Thailand are the sample of the study. Organizational innovation (commitment to learning, open-mindedness and shared vision) tends to have an impact on organizational innovation. Interestingly, organizational learning becomes an important player in explaining and determining organizational innovation in an organization. Hence, this study aims at examining the impacts of organizational learning on organizational innovation of electronics businesses in Thailand. Organizational learning consists of three dimensions, namely commitment to learning, open-mindedness, and shared vision. In this study, the key research questions are: (1) how commitment to learning has a significant effect on organizational innovation, (2) how mindedness has an important influence on organizational innovation, (3) how shared vision has a critical impact on organizational innovation, and (4) whether the aforementioned relationships are positive.

   This study is outlined as follows. The first section reviews existing significant literature in the areas and streams of organizational learning and organizational innovation, links between the concepts of the aforementioned variables, and develops the key research hypotheses of those relationships. The second explicitly describes the details of research methods, including data collection, measurements, and statistics. The third gives the results of the analysis and the corresponding discussion. The final summarizes the findings of the study and points both theoretical and managerial contributions, and presents suggestions for further research and the limitations of the study.

2. RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

   The organizational learning-organizational innovation relationships are systematically investigated. Organizational learning is an independent variable and it includes commitment to learning, open-mindedness, and shared vision. Also, organizational innovation is a dependent variable. Thus, the conceptual, linkage, and research model presents the associations between organizational learning and organizational innovation as shown in Figure 1.

   [FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

   2.1 Commitment to Learning

   In the existing literature of organizational learning, commitment to learning is its first dimension that plays a significant role in explaining a business outcome. The commitment to learning refers to the organization values learning through knowing and understanding the causes and effects of its actions (Santos-Vijande et al., 2005). It is the organization values in knowing the causes and effects of its actions and is definitely to value learning. To gain more advantages, benefits, and successes in business operations, firms tend to outstandingly commit and explicitly enhance learning culture, activity, capability, and strategy in the organization. Also, commitment to learning is the ability of firms to think and reason learning as a value axiomatic to the organization (Sinkula et al., 1997). Essentially, it helps firms improve their understanding of their markets and environments over time. With the challenges of commitment to learning literatures, top-management executives need to pay more attention to commitment learning values in order to implement it for achieving organizational innovation and improving organizational efficiency and performance. Then, firms with stronger level of commitment to learning tend to have greater organizational innovation. Likewise, commitment to learning is defined as the organization regarding learning as its most important basic value (Liao et al., 2008). Accordingly, learning is a significant tool in helping firms increase organizational effectiveness, improve competitive advantage, and enhance firm performance. Thus, commitment to learning becomes an important strategy for supporting firms in order to survive and sustain in the competitive markets.

   To distinctively establish, maintain, and develop organizational innovation, commitment to learning explicitly has an influence on organizational innovation (Liao et al., 2008). It definitely pushes firms to learn competitive environments, understand customer needs and market situations, and receive organizational survival and sustainability. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), commitment to learning also has a positive impact on their business innovation that encourages them to succeed and grow in the uncertain business conditions (Garcia-Morales et al., 2007). Hence, it is an effective strategy that is a prerequisite to their ability to...