Handbooks as a tool for organizational learning: a case study

No agreement exists about how formalization-the extent of written rules, procedures, and instructions-influences learning in large organizations. This paper contributes to the debate by studying a project with the objective of making requirement and procedure handbooks an efficient tool for experience transfer in an offshore oil company. Experience transfer is defined as organizational processes for communicating experiences across organizational boundaries. Results show that enabling features have to be present if handbooks are to be regarded as a tool for experience transfer: content simplicity, handbook availability, increased awareness and user motivation, and minimum document volume and bureaucracy. At the time of this study, the project lacked some of these enabling features, resulting in a low degree of knowledge and use of the handbooks. Only those organization members participating in the project knew the handbooks and saw them as a tool for experience transfer. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.