Organizational learning, its consequences and a research on the ISE

Organizational knowledge, which consists of organizational rules, roles, customs, strategies, structures, technologies, cultural practices, capabilities etc., is the most valuable asset of today?s firms. The change on organizational knowledge appears through organizational learning. The aim of the study is investigating the fundamentals, sources, main streams and sub-processes of organizational learning, its interactions with organization theories and its effects on the firm. An empirical research has been conducted on the manufacturing companies which are traded on İstanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) in 2006 and 2007 for investigating the effects of organizational learning on the firm. The goal of the research is exploring organizational learning?s relationships with financial performance and innovativeness. The relationship between organizational learning and innovativeness is examined by employing the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and the correlation and regression analyses on the data gathered form top managers of the companies through the organizational learning scale which includes external knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation and organizational memory and the innovativeness scale which consists of one dimension. The relationship between organizational learning and financial performance is examined through investigating the relationship between absorptive capacity, which is a specific type of organizational learning related to an organization?s relationship with external knowledge, and the profitability which includes return on equity (ROE), return on sales (ROS) and return on assets (ROA) by using the correlation and regression analyses. In conclusion, the findings indicate that organizational learning impacts innovativeness while absorptive capacity impacts ROA. Both relationships are positive and statistically significant.