TRAMES, 2003, 7(57/52), 2, 83–98

The impact of organizational culture on organizational learning at six Estonian hospitals

Ruth Alas ¹, Maaja Vadi ²

¹ Estonian Business School, ² University of Tartu

Abstract. In 2002 six hospitals in Tallinn were merged as part of a project designed by Swedish consultants. Such a large-scale change provides an interesting case for studying how organizational culture intervenes in organizational learning. The impact of task and relationship orientations of organizational culture on the preference for individual and collective learning was investigated in groups having different sociodemographic characteristics. It was demonstrated that older people are better learners in terms of organizational learning than younger. Organizational learning among people with tenure of five years or less in a particular organization is influenced by task orientation of organizational culture only. Relationship orientation starts to influence organizational learning after five years in an organization.

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