Strategy as Learning: Capturing Emerging Knowledge.

Abstract

The process of strategy making presents a multi-faceted debate, with the ‘Learning School’ of strategic management being one of the main approaches to conceptualise strategy formation. This approach suggests that strategy making is a process of emergent learning over time, where strategy makers critically reflect on past experience, experiment in new competitive conditions and adapt their strategies accordingly. The premises of the Learning School are similar to the premises of action learning, and yet, the action learning paradigm appears to have made little or no impact in strategic management literature and practice. This paper proposes that implementing an action learning methodology into the process of strategy making could make an important contribution to strategy makers by capturing, harnessing and developing organizational learning and knowledge.