Learning and firm dynamics: theoretical approaches and empirical analysis of dynamic capabilities

The aim of the paper is to investigate the relationships between learning and change at the firm level. In the learning economy, this relationship has become crucial for the firm, spurring an upsurge of interest in both its theoretical conceptualisation and empirical measurement. Faster technological change, shorter product life-cycles, more frequent job shifts and a lively firm demography have made learning - a flow kind of concept - rather than knowledge - a stock kind of concept - the key determinant of the economic success of the firm. Increasingly more, firm competitiveness and growth are dependent on innovation, whose successful development relies on the building-up of new competencies and skills, rather than on a large amount of economically useful knowledge. How firms define their problem-solving strategies, shape their cognitive models and develop their organizational capabilities to learn has attracted the attention of several streams of research in organizational economics and in the economics of the firm. Either explicitly or implicitly, each of them addresses an aspect of what can be called the dynamic capabilities of the firm. Dynamic capabilities can in fact be seen as an important bridging concept between the firm learning and the firm dynamics.