When lifelong learning isn't enough : the importance of individual and organisational unlearning

As organizations increasingly strive to maximise the utility of their human capital, many encourage lifelong learning, and some have adopted formal knowledge-management strategies. There is an evergrowing body of research relating to organizational learning and knowledge-management (Easterby-Smith, Burgoyne, & Araujo, 1999; Markoczy, 1994; Nonaka, 1994; Starbuck, 1996), particularly since the transition to the “knowledge era”. There has been more recent focus on the topic of unlearning both at an individual and organizational level. It is proposed in this paper that these four concepts are interrelated, and a model for linking these is put forward.