A practical approach to organizational unlearning

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on organizational unlearning as a part of managerial processes. Organizational unlearning has been gaining more attention in the last decade. Nevertheless, studies on organizational unlearning remain scarce compared to its counterpart, organizational learning. This paper aims to update current knowledge on unlearning and to reinstate its importance in the knowledge value chain/business model. We used portions of the literature that explicitly state “unlearning” as their main or subsidiary topic and produced a “scoping review” that highlights the different concepts associated with unlearning. Both the concept of organizational unlearning and its importance seem to be rather accepted in current literature as no new definition of O.U. has emerged in literature since last reviewed in 2008. The focus seems to have shifted from defining unlearning to defining its context and the parameters surrounding its application. This paper is an attempt to pursue the work of Zahra and Tsang (2008) where they review literature’s organizational unlearning concepts. In the current paper, we review suggested/identified barriers and facilitators related to the unlearning process