MARKET ORIENTATION AND THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION

Effective organizations are configurations of management practices that facilitate the development of the knowledge that becomes the basis for competitive advantage. A market orientation, complemented by an entrepreneurial drive, provides the cultural foundation for organizational learning. However, as important as market orientation and entrepreneurship are, they must be complemented by an appropriate climate to produce a ''learning organization''. The authors describe the processes through which organizations develop and use new knowledge to improve performance. They propose a set of organizational elements that comprise the learning organization and conclude with recommendations for research to contribute to the understanding of learning organizations.