JOURNAL OF THE ACADEMY OF MARKETING SCIENCE WINTER 2002Bell et al. / ORG NIZATIONAL LEARNING Schools of Thought in Organizational Learning

This article attempts to bring coherence to the diversity that characterizes organizational learning research. It ar-gues that organizational learning is embedded in four schools of thought: an economic school, a managerial school, a developmental school, and a process school. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the schools, describes how they differ from each other, and outlines how each of them can be employed effectively. To demon-strate the benefits of theoretical plurality, the four schools are applied to the key marketing topics of market orienta-tion and new product development. Implications for future research in marketing are provided. Scientists tend not to follow in the trails of others if blazing their own trail leads to ownership of part of the landscape