A research on Turkish companies to determine the relations of organizational learning, information technology competency and organizational context

In today?s fast changing environment, knowledge is a critical factor affecting an organization's ability to remain competitive in the global marketplace. But organizations not only need knowledge; they also need the skills to update and put that knowledge dynamically into practice. Organizational learning, a concept which promotes continuous adaptation and improvement, has therefore provided to survive the current turbulent environment. Organizational learning can be conceived of as a principal means of achieving the strategic challenge of companies. Information technology can be seen as a key tool in organizational learning processes. Given the strategic significance of knowledge, many organizations are adopting information technologies to support their knowledge management and organizational learning activities. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the relations between collaborative organizational culture, information technology competency and organizational learning. Collaborative culture is one which explicitly favors knowledge sharing and knowledge integrating into the organization, encourages debate and dialogue in facilitating contributions from multiple levels of the organization. Information technology competency is the extent to which a firm is knowledgeable about and effectively utilizes IT to manage information within the firm. Organizational learning is the procedures to improve actions through knowledge acquisition and creation. To test the hypothesis of this study, an empirical study has been carried among ISO 500 Large Companies. The results show that collaborative culture encourages the development of organizational learning. Collaborative culture has also a significant effect on information technology competence. The relation between culture and learning is mediated (partially) by information technology competence. Key Words: Organizational Learning, Information Technology, Organizational Context, Collobrative Culture