Embracing innovation and creativity through the capacity of unlearning

Abstract

The capacity for unlearning is important for organizations to embrace innovation and creativity, due to the urgent need give up obsolete knowledge. A critique of organizational learning models highlights the unlearning capacity in organizational learning processes. We anticipate new paths for organizational learning arising from a critique of the models. Research shows that a lack of the unlearning capacity in the organizational learning models can be regarded as a weakness. We propose the internalization phase be included, an intermediate step that absorbs, reflects upon and internalizes all the previous phases, accommodating this additional phase and integrating it into the organization increasing the value of the organization’s heritage. The level of internalization should be backed by a specific leadership and associated with humanizing organizational values. The self-efficacy construct placed at the center of this model indicates its umbrella capacity embracing a range of efforts needed to obtain the best possible results.