Organizational learning is the process of achieving
organizational change and strategic renewal through
a cyclical pattern of reaching out to explore new ideas
while at the same time implementing more familiar
ideas that have become accepted by individuals and
groups within the organization.17 Through this process
the organization is able to explore new capabilities
while consolidating recently acquired capabilities.
There are four stages defined in the theory of organizational
learning: intuiting, interpreting, integrating,
and institutionalizing.18 Individuals are the key agency
in the initial exploration stage because it is individuals,
not organizations, who are able to identify and
initiate new ideas and share and interpret them with
others in the organization.19 Small groups are important
in the early implementation stage by interpreting
and integrating new ideas and making sense of them
by actually putting them into practice.20