| As a matter of survival, organizations must learn how to more effectively adapt to the dynamics of a rapidly shifting, hyper-competitive, and highly complex business environment. In response to this requirement, interest in organizational learning has grown sharply over the past two decades (Crossan & Guatto, 1996). The abundance of literature on organizational learning notwithstanding, the multidisciplinary body of organizational learning theory has remained largely propositional. Few reliable and valid measurement instruments have been developed to study the organizational learning construct (Easterby-Smith, Snell, & Gherardi, 1998), and only a handful of quantitative empirical research studies on organizational learning have been performed.Organizational theorists have also given extensive attention to organizational identity and organizational identification due to the importance of these concepts in gaining a better understanding of how greater organizational effectiveness can be achieved. Similar to organizational learning, however, there has been an enigmatic shortage of empirical research purposed to study organizational identity and organizational identification (Dukerich, Golden, & Shortell, 2002). Organizational researchers have come to develop an understanding of the importance of organizational identity and organizational identification relative to other organizational constructs, such as organizational culture (Hatch & Schultz, 2002 Schrodt, 2002), and organizational image (Hatch & Schultz, 2002 Mael & Ashforth, 1992 Smidts, Pruyn, & van Riel, 2001). Indeed, Elsbach (2003) has recently called for research relating the notion of organizational learning to organizational identity.This research employed a survey design, deriving a sample of 230 participants from a national health care organization, and 2,103 Pennsylvania-based businesses having more than 250 employees. Structural Equation Modeling techniques were used to determine the strength of the relationships between the organizational learning, image, culture, identity, and identification constructs, and to determine the overall fit of the conceptual model. Qualitative findings were used to triangulate the primary quantitative findings. |
