Although at first the terms organizational learning and the learning organization were interchangeable, slowly the two concepts separated into two streams at the beginning of the 90s. The learning organization is at this point the prescriptive stream, oriented towards practice. This perspective centers on the characteristics of an organization that promote learning and facilitates the creation of a certain type of organization.

On the other hand, organizational learning is the descriptive model, centering on the process of learning in the organization. The roots of this concept are in social and cognitive psychology, and it has a strong academic orientation. The main question being how do organizations learn, this type of research often quotes the work of Argyris and Schon (1978, 1996), although an analysis these authors make of the two streams (1999) positions them as integrators.

knowledge management, learning organization, organizational learning