Early work by Hedberg (1981) and Gahmberg (1980) also extended stimulus–response models of individual learning to explain the organizational selection of stimuli and choice of responses. That is, the notion of cognitive change or learning is evidenced by the extent of behavioural change or adaptation within the organization in response to stimuli from the external environment, in line with the metaphorical roots of the organizational learning metaphor in operant conditioning (see, for example