Strategic leadership and organizational learning

Organizational learning is a fundamental strategic process and the only sustainable competitive advantage in the future. Unfortunately, despite the increased interest in this topic, researchers said very little specifically about the role of director-generals and top management teams in the implementation of organizational learning in their firms. However, theorists of strategic leadership argue that top managers are key to firms' outcomes because of the decisions they are empowered to make since, in the end, they are responsible for what happens in the organization. Although there is an implicit assumption that the strategic leaders are the leading force behind organizational learning, researchers have not defined specific behaviors and mechanisms through which leaders influence learning. While huge budgets are spent on learning, databases and "new learning departments", director-generals and top managers have no instruction on how their reactions speed up or slow down learning. Strategic leadership and organizational learning have remained largely unrelated research fields.