| Organizations learn as a consequence of operating in their environments where they, intentionally or unintentionally, gather information and acquire knowledge. While organizational learning is generally considered adaptive, research suggests that the impact of learning on firms is far more complex. Recently, it has been suggested that the adaptivity of organizational learning is condition-dependent (Miner, Raghavan and Haunschild, 1997), complementing earlier views that some types of learning extend the survival of firms in certain situations (Dutton and Freedman, 1985; March, 1991; Levinthal, 1991). My review of current theory and recent research supports the idea of condition-dependence---that learning at the organization and population levels may be differentially advantageous to organizational survival. Specifically, organizational learning may be survival-enhancing, survival-imperiling, or exert no effects, depending upon the extent of environmental uncertainty confronting organizations.;My research investigates the notion of condition-dependent adaptivity of organizational learning. The dependent variable I examine is the risk of organizational failure: survival-enhancing organizational learning serves to lower the risk of failure while harmful organizational learning increases the risk of failure. I test a series of hypotheses concerning the effects of organization-level, vicarious population-level, cross-population, and congenital population-level experience, and the moderating effects of regulation-induced uncertainty---regulatory dynamism---on the risk of organizational failure. I use event history analysis to test my hypotheses in the population of charitably-funded Homes for the Aged in the Province of Ontario over the entire 160 year history of the long-term care industry.;Increasing regulatory dynamism significantly increases the risk of organizational failure. I find support for condition-dependent adaptivity: under conditions of increasing regulatory dynamism, only extremes of organization experience significantly reduce the risk of organizational failure. I observe a "stuck in the middle" phenomenon, where immunity to increasing regulatory dynamism enjoyed by charitable homes with very little, or a great deal, of experience is not enjoyed by homes with a moderate amount of experience. In addition to offering insights into some of the conditions under which certain types of experiential learning are survival-enhancing, my findings challenge some of the characteristics assigned organization- and population-level learning in extant organizational learning literature. |
