Abstract:

Context:
In the age of instability, where things are complex and rapidly changing, organizational learning and strategic management are key to gaining a competitive advantage. Individuals and organizations need to be continuously learning — and fast — that is, need to be agile and dynamic learners (Aspin et al., 2001; Matthews, 2013).
Nonetheless, it cannot be forgotten that in organizations people get retired and significant people loss can happen in certain departments. There is a common worry in this sense due to the upcoming retirements of the “baby boomers” (Morales, 2010). In most cases, there is a person or group of people who will have to get ready to assume the role and/or responsibilities the person leaving was in charge for.

Purpose:
An OLS (Organizational Learning Structure) contributes to the organization’s competitive advantage by pursuing development, and high performance of its workforce through learning activities for individual, team, and organizational learning. And so, the following question arises: what kind of OLS can contribute to the knowledge transfer between those leaving an organization and those staying?

Methodology:
The methodology we employed was Participatory Action Research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005) for Organizational Development (Coghlan, 2019; Lewin, 1946) following a qualitative research approach.
We carried out three intervention cycles of action and reflection (Coghlan & Brannick, 2014) in an industrial enterprise located in the Basque Country (in Fagor Automation S.Coop.); first to diagnose their current OLS; the second cycle to define foundations of their new OLS with the active participation of various people from the organization, and; third to implement the newly-designed OLS.
The data has been gathered through semi-structured interviews and direct observation supported by a reflective journal kept by the researcher. The results were analyzed through explanation building and logic-model analysis.

Results:
The new OLS to attend the upcoming successions has been successfully designed. There has been a common agreement among those participating in the creation process. Although, challenges are foreseen for its implementation and display of the structure.

Keywords:

Organizational learning, succession, learning management, knowledge sharing.