Exploring and Measuring Organizational Learning Capability and Competitive Advantage of Petroleum Industry Firms

Organizational learning is important in today’s dynamic and discontinuous environment of change.This study attempts to test the theoretical underpinning that organizational learning is related to competitive advantage. Through personal interviews and mailed surveys, 94 responses from employees of the petroleum industry were used in the regression analysis. Empirical findings show that theoretically assumed dimensions of the learning organization and organizational learning contribute significantly towards the achievement of competitive advantage. Multiple regression analysis showed the existence of significant relationships between seven independent variables and the dependent variable of competitive advantage. Strategic thinking and team learning explained 59.2% and 22.3% of variance respectively in achieving a competitive advantage. A discussion of the results along with implications and recommendations are provided. Key words: Learning capability; Competitive advantage; Organizational learning; Petroleum