Creating Shared Visions in Organizations – Taking an Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management Perspective

Abstract

This paper is based on the observation that literature on shared visions is either mainly dominated by top-down vision communication, which aims at followers taking over the vision of a leader, or accounts on shared visions are too narrow and too unspecific to be of much use for organizational practice. As a consequence, we currently lack an applicable process model that facilitates the creation of a shared organizational visions in a bottom-up manner. This paper aims at introducing and theoretically grounding such a process model. We find that the creation of a shared organizational vision can be seen as an instance of a knowledge creating and organizational learning process that transforms personal visions and personal organizational visions through a dialectic process towards a shared organizational vision. During this process, knowledge about needs, values, resources and desires is created and shared in the organization. In so doing, we summarize extant literature on developing shared visions and synthesize the literature into a process model which can be applied by academics and practitioners alike.