| dc.description.abstract | The ongoing technological revolution accelerates the globalization process and reduces the information differential all over the world. In the era of knowledge economy, companies must nurture a few competencies in the race to stay ahead of rivals. Organizational learning is a core capability for a company to achieve competitive advantage. Increasingly, academicians started to emphasize the importance of market information processing. This study views organizational learning from the perspective of market information processing. The ultimate goal of this research is to contribute to the creation of collective knowledge and organizational memory. Management consulting is a knowledge intensive industry, and knowledge is the power base of a consultancy. Knowledge is suggested to be one of the main forces driving the recent restructuring of the consulting industry toward an increased concentration of large, global management consulting organizations. Indeed, much scholarly attention has been devoted to organizational learning in large organizations. The extensive literature review indicates that a gap exists between the organizational learning literature and the practice of small-sized companies. This thesis intends to investigate the process on how management consultancy conducts market-based organizational learning, by examining the cases of five small-sized companies in Norway. By interviewing founders from five small-sized companies, this study reveals that small-sized companies rarely focus on building a standardized work method and knowledge management system. The empirical study indicates that small-sized companies faced a common problem, which is to enhance the organizational memory. Thus, the original market-based organizational learning framework constrains the interaction between individual tacit knowledge and collective knowledge. By means of the knowledge conversion model, this study provides a new market-based organizational learning framework for small companies. The new framework proposes that small-sized companies can rapidly leverage individual knowledge into organizational level through a redundant condition. Further, this thesis suggests the best practice of organizational learning in small-sized consulting companies. | eng |