Organizational learning in supply chain networks

This chapter provides a conceptual review and discussion of organizational learning within supply chain networks. While much of the existing research focuses on intrafirm learning, this chapter emphasizes learning across entities within supply chain networks, which is relatively overlooked in the literature. Supply chain networks act as knowledge sources, where firms acquire and share knowledge to improve both firm- and network-level performance. The chapter summarizes key areas of organizational learning, along with the associated risks and costs, and examines how network structural properties shape the learning process. Additionally, we discuss how this learning, in turn, influences overall network performance. We advocate for further research on organizational and network learning, particularly in the context of emerging technologies and other learning dynamics, to clarify their impacts on supply chain network performance.