Interorganizational Learning through Exploration and Exploitation Under Conditions of Goal Divergence in Private-Public Partnerships: A Case Study

In a time when interdependence in business becomes more prevalent and necessary to maintain and sustain competitive advantage, understanding the mechanisms by which businesses relate and collaboratively adapt become central to collaborative growth and mutual success. Learning becomes central to the adaptive process. Interorganizational learning is an often challenging result of collaborative efforts. The more different the organizations are from one another, the more challenging the adaptive process and interorganizational learning. This writing addresses some of the complexities involved in collaborative learning of organizations with divergent goals through the lens of exploration exploitation phenomena. It further addresses how interorganizational learning happens between organizations that are private and public in nature. This writing is a case study that answers the question of how organizations working in collaboratives learn from each other to attain mutually beneficial results by examining two such entities in a government and private partnership. This study extends concepts of interorganizational learning as well as provides guidelines for business entities seeking to attain or sustain learning organizations. It also provides a framework from which government entities may work synergistically with private enterprise to provide competitive service to their respective demographic