You can’t teach understanding, you construct it: Applying social network analysis to organizational learning

Researchers in the fields of learning and social network theory have emphasized the importance of social relationships for acquiring information. However, little inquiry has been made into the influence that the structure of social relationships within an organization has on enhancing learning capability. Organizational learning and social network theory and methods are employed to develop a conceptual framework that links network structural attributes with learning characteristics in order to identify potential barriers to organizational learning. The results from case studies support the proposition that specific social network structures are associated with different barriers to organizational learning.