Organizational Learning Curves: An Overview

Linda Argote
Additional contact information
Linda Argote: Carnegie Mellon University

Chapter Chapter 1 in Organizational Learning, 2013, pp 1-29 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract “Learning curves” have been found in many organizations. As organizations produce more of a product, the unit cost of production typically decreases at a decreasing rate. A learning curve for the production of an advanced military jet built in the 1970s and 1980s is shown in Fig. 1.1. The number of direct labor hours required to assemble each jet aircraft is plotted on the vertical axis; the cumulative number of aircraft produced is plotted on the horizontal axis. As can be seen from Fig. 1.1, the number of direct labor hours required to assemble each aircraft decreased significantly as experience was gained in production, and the rate of decrease declined with rising cumulative output. This and related phenomena are referred to as learning curves, progress curves, experience curves, or learning by doing.

Keywords: Learning Curve; Unit Cost; Learning Rate; Knowledge Transfer; Organizational Learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4614-5251-5_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781461452515

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-5251-5_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().