KM and Organizational Learning

Nadejda Loumbeva posted the following question in Linkedin Answers:

What would be, according to you, the link and linkages between organisational learning and knowledge management?

My answer:
I see knowledge management as the platform and facilitator for organisational learning.

In the past organisational learning followed a top-down approach, that is, an expert would deliver a body of content to learners. The latter were more or less passive recipients of knowledge.

This model of organisational learning is hardly relevant and useful today when knowledge is getting updated at a very fast rate.

Therefore the ‘constructive’ model of learning is more useful in the organisational context today. According to this model, learners construct knowledge through active exploration and collaboration.

In this scenario, knowledge management (especially in its 2.0 avatar, that is, KM armed with Web 2.0 tools) has a much bigger role in facilitating organisational learning.