Organizational learning measurement and the effect on firm innovation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose and validate a measurement scale to capture organizational learning capabilities (OLC) and examine how OLC affects innovation. There are several models in the literature that have been generated by statistical data from manufacturing firms. This paper presents a structural equation model in order to measure OLC in Iranian ceramic tile manufacturers. The proposed model has five dimensions – i.e. managerial commitment and empowerment, experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment and openness and knowledge transfer and integration – and is evaluated by 23 items. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 18 Iranian ceramic tile manufacturers. The survey was sent to employees of the business section of each factory and a total of 173 valid questionnaires were obtained and used to test the research model, employing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), a particular analysis of structural equation modeling methods. Findings – In the validation process, both the principal components and the confirmatory factor analyses clearly corroborate the existence of the five dimensions mentioned in the theoretical work. Likewise, the scale provides information that could be used by those managers wishing to improve learning capability in their firms. In addition, the results show that the OLC has a positive impact on innovation. Originality/value – This research suggests that that organizational environments that facilitate learning are more innovative. In addition, the OLC literature shows that OLC has a significant impact on the effectiveness and performance of the organization. Therefore, it is essential to find a valid measurement that can evaluate OLC in an organization. The five‐factor model introduced in this paper is a practical way to measure OLC. As a result, managers can determine which organizational learning issues are strong and which are weak; this is a hint for improvement.