2 Michael Popper and Raanan Lipshitz Organizational Learning Mechanisms, Culture, and Feasibility ‘Organizational learning’ and ‘learning organizations’ are currently in vogue in the academic and applied discourse on organizations (Levitt and March, 1988; Senge, 1990; Cohen and Sproul, 1991; Howard and Haas, 1993; Argyris and Sch¨ on, 1996). The down side of the ensuing outpouring of publications is a confusing proliferation of definitions and conceptualizations that fail to converge into a coherent whole: ‘Research in organisational learning suf- fered from conceptions that were excessively broad, encompassing merely all organisational change . . . and from various other maladies that arise from insufficient agreement among those working in the area on its key concepts and problems’ (Cohen and Sproul, 1991: 1; see also Daft and Huber, 1987; Dodgson, 1993; Garvin, 1993; Hawkins, 1994; Huber, 1991; Miller, 1996). The present article tries to clarify this confusion by considering four questions: (1) what are the similarities and differences between organizational learning and individual learning? (2) what conditions promote organizational learn- ing? (3) what conditions promote productive organizational learning? and (4) how is organizational learning related to learning organizations? These questions touch four sources of ambiguity and contention in the literature on organizational learning. Clarifying them may help to reduce the conceptual haze surrounding the twin concepts of organizational learning and learning organizations, thus making them more amenable to study and normative intervention. Individual Learning vs Organizational Learning The notion of organizational learning proves particularly slippery in the interface between individual and organizational learning. However defined, organizational learning is clearly mediated by the learning of individual organizational members. Where then lies the border between individual and organizational learning, and to what extent can models of individual learning describe organizational learning? Researchers take different positions on these issues. Some equate organiza- tional learning with individual learning; others see the two as distinct processes. Representing the former position Hedberg suggests that: ‘Organ- isations do not have brains, but they have cognitive systems and memories. As