The Agents of organizational Learning.
Another change in the field of organizational learning since its beginnings surrounds the question of the agents of organizational learning. When the network of contributors to this handbook started meeting in the mid-1990s, a criticism leveled at the field was that it was focused too narrowly on an elitist view of organ inactions. Theories of organizational learning at that time reflected an exclusively top-down view of organizational processes. The work by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) in Japanese companies highlighted this bias in the Anglo-Saxon publications that dominated the field. Their research led them to point out an alternative pattern of organizational learning, one which the agency of middle managers became more visible than it had been: the 'middle-up- down model' The chapters in this handbook show how much progress has been achieved on this topic. The overly narrow focus on top management is being replaced by an awareness of explorations by many more actors and of more complex constellations of leadership in learning processes. A far greater variety of types of actors has been studied in the past decade than in the early phase of research. These types include some agents that are not permanently based inside the organization: unions Drinkuth, Riegler, and Wolff, Ch. 20), super visory boards (Tainio, Lija, and Santalalnen, Ch. 19), and consulting services (Bertholn Antal and Krebsbach-Grath, Ch. 21). The significance of actors who can serve as boundary spanners that is, individuals or groups who build links between the organization and its environment is underscored by Rosenstiel and Koch 8) in their analysis of value changes in society as triggers of organizational learning