Collaborative technology in the learning organization: integrating process with information flow, access and interpretation

Realizing organizational learning in practice has not and will not happen by itself. In this paper, we recommend that for organizational learning to become part of daily work, collaborative technology must be integrated with evolving technical and business processes. New communities of practice and consortia must be nurtured, which include people and organizations that are experienced and knowledgeable in collaboration technology, organizational learning, and process initiation and improvement. We point to the importance of distinguishing between learning at the individual level and learning at the organizational level and describe how the latter might be realized. In closing, we outline a technology transition approach which is reliant on collaboration technology, that we are beginning to define and pilot at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). This approach explores the concept of distance affiliation and emerging roles for the SEI´s staff and our affiliate partners