Several chapters document the effectiveness of leadership diffused among actors at various levels of the organization (Berthoin Antal, Len hardt, and Rosenbrock, Ch. 39; Friedman, Ch. 17; Sadler, Ch. 18). These contributions help clarify the role that top management needs to play in learning processes, namely, that of articulating a clear vision that can orient the direction of learning and knowledge creation in an organization. This specification of the responsibility of top management does not, however, presage a return to the original simplistic elite view of organizational learning. Comparing public sector and private sector leadership, LaPalombara (Ch. 25) concludes that leaders in large organizations in both sectors have little direct control over resources. He notes that the ability to build relationships across the organization is becoming increasingly important to the achievement of goals. As the case study by Krebsbach Gnath (Ch. 40) illustrates, the development of a vision by senior management is most effective when the process involves members of the organization at different levels. The recent multiplication of techniques for achieving these alms is striking. Pawlowsky, Forslin, and Renhardt (Ch. 35) describe a range of innovative ways to involve large numbers of people quite intensely across the organization.
An additional advance in the literature is that all the chapters on the different kinds of agents emphasize how members of an organization, whether they are at the board level or low in the hierarchy, are capable not only of promoting but also of impeding organizational learning and knowledge creation. The emerging challenge to research in this area is to explore the range of agents of learning as they Interact in different constellations of organization, including networks, communities of practice, and imaginary organizations.