Editorial

It is with pleasure that I introduce the penultimate issue for the current year/volume of The Learning Organization. This issue has a very global flavor. The last two articles by Ford and by Dymock and McCarthy are both more general models of practices that enable and facilitate organizational learning,but they come from the United States and Australia (opposite sides of the world,or nearly so).

The remaining papers all focus to a greater or lesser extent on organizational learning issues in specific countries from around the world. Bhatnagar presents an analysis of the organizational learning capability and its link to firm performance for firms located in India, though some of these firms are multinational corporations. Aramburu, Sáenz, and Rivera discuss organizational learning and its affect on firm performance in the Basque region of Europe. Abu Khadra and Rawabdeh provide an examination of the presence of the concept of a learning organization in Jordanian organizations. Finally, the last of the four lead-off articles for this issue by Manu and Walker examines social capital and knowledge transfer in a Pacific Island (Vanuatu) setting.

The purpose of this editorial is to highlight and promote the idea that knowledge management and organizational learning methodologies and research should not be thought of as belonging to more developed industrialized nations,but rather that the benefit of knowledge management and organizational learning research may be applied worldwide and may be especially beneficial in developing economies. Researchers in these disciplines who are located in more developed countries should seek out partnerships with academicians and business professionals in other parts of the world and particularly in developing economies to help produce a more holistic and global impression of the cross cultural possibilities and applied benefits of the knowledge management and organizational learning research disciplines.

Steven Walczak