2025/11/17 by Bishoy L. Zaki · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Environmental Science · #Policy Transfer and Learning #Public Policy and Administration Research #Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
paper · doi:10.1111/1467-8500.70031
openalex publication_date 2025/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/11/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract Policy learning literature acknowledges the importance of accounting for how learning aggregates across three different analytical levels—micro, meso, and macro—to better understand learning's contribution to policy change. Yet, a missing link in this causal architecture persists, particularly concerning how public organisations undertake policy learning aiming to influence policymaking and governance, a process rarely studied yet often conflated with frequently researched, albeit fundamentally different, ‘organisational learning’ processes. To address this issue, this article conceptualises ‘organisational policy learning’ as a process by which public organisations seek and process information and knowledge about policy and governance issues with the aims of updating understandings of viable solutions, influencing policymaking, and defending, maintaining, or advancing particular policy‐related, political, or value preferences within an evolving public context. Then, it identifies the key triggers, processes, dimensions, and outcomes of organisational policy learning, illustrating how they differ from often‐studied organisational learning processes. Doing so offers several contributions, including the development of a conceptual and analytical device for understanding the often‐overlooked organisational policy learning process, particularly in relation to the enigmatic process of policy change, stimulating the development and testing of propositions by future research, and pointing practitioners’ attention to the factors that could influence organisational policy learning. Points for practitioners While public organisations engage in organisational learning to enhance their internal procedures, routines, cultures, performance, and viability, they also engage in organisational ‘policy learning’ aimed at defending, maintaining, or advancing preferred policy and value positions and influencing policymaking and governance. In organisational policy learning, public organisations act as sensemakers and lesson aggregators, synthesising information and knowledge from multiple sources; thus, practitioners should foster collaboration between different organisational layers and external stakeholders to ensure a cohesive and comprehensive approach to policy learning. Organisational learning approaches encourage developing organisational capacities related to enhancing internal organisational processes, leading to improved performance and viability. However, for the outward and more politically engaged organisational policy learning process, practitioners should also focus on developing a broader set of policymaking‐ and governance‐related capacities, such as those related to politics, advocacy, policy entrepreneurship, alliance building, and networking.