Advice seeking network structures and the learning organization

Abstract

Organizational learning can be described as a transfer of individuals' cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Employees seeking the same colleagues for advice are structurally equivalent, and the aim of the paper is to study if the concept can act as a way to organizational learning. It is argued that the mimicking of colleagues' advice seeking structures will induce structural equivalence and transfer the accuracy of individuals' cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Taking a dyadic level of analysis the authors revisit a classical case and present novel data analyses. The empirical results indicate that the mimicking of advice seeking structures can alter cognitive accuracy. The paper also discusses the findings' implications for organization learning theory and practice.