How Organizations Learn: U.S. Government Estimates of Foreign Military Spending

Organizational learning is conceived apart from "inertia" by drawing from the literature on organizations and cognitive psychology. Organizational learning is predicted to be cumulative and specific (limited in space and time) rather than noncumulative or general (applied to diverse subjects and new tasks). It is also expected to reflect important subject and learner characteristics that are expressed in two competing models: the first assumes that subject difficulty impedes learning and the second assumes that apparent inhibitors actually facilitate learning. Correlations are examined among successive estimates of foreign military spending, for the same countries and years, published by the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Learning scores, for different nations, are regressed on potential learning inhibitors and facilitators that are linked to the two models. Learning in ACDA is most convincingly shown to be specific (though cumulative and noncumulative). Learning appears to occur with moderate challenges and to be determined primarily by learner characteristics.