Organizational zemblanity: how organizational learning can reinforce rigidity, error, and misalignment

Organizational learning can help organizations improve and adapt, but it can also reinforce error and misalignment. These negative outcomes are often interpreted as implementation problems or as signs of incomplete learning. We instead examine the possibility that dysfunction can arise from learning processes themselves, even when those processes operate as intended. We review 290 articles to identify recurring assumptions in the literature and the conditions under which they do not hold. We then identify three mechanisms that can turn learning systems into sources of rigidity and misalignment, and conceptualize the self-reinforcing trajectory produced by their interaction as learning-based organizational zemblanity. Our review shows how organizational learning can generate both adaptive and dysfunctional trajectories and outlines a research agenda on identifying and interrupting negative learning trajectories.