Interim Management & Organisational Learning - A Paradox for Learning in Times of Crises?

Abstract: In the rapidly changing business climate companies often face exceptional situations and tasks. As a result, the demand for heterogeneous human resources, additional flexibility and management skills has increased. One solution that has gained increased support is interim management. An interim manager is not constrained by company habit or history and can serve as temporary support to an organisation when resolving an organisational crises. During phases of exceptional situations and tasks scholars stress the never-ending importance of organisational learning. Thus, there is an exciting paradox in the relationship between the interim managers' short-term focus and the long-term perspective of organisational learning. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to existing literature by combining these research fields and examining interim managers' effect on organisational learning in an organisational crisis setting. To answer the question, a qualitative multistep approach was conducted that consisted of interviews with interim management service providers, interim managers, companies and industry experts. The collected empirical findings were analysed based on a developed conceptual framework. The conceptual framework highlights the importance of organisational learning in every stage of resolving an organisational crisis. Findings show that interim managers affect organisational learning by engaging in single- or double-loop learning by acting as learning triggers. This is based upon their route of action that in turn shifts the way in which strategies and consequences are framed. The interim manager will trigger learning by engaging in different forms of knowledge conversion and knowledge utilisation in accordance to the SECI model. However, opportunities for organisational members to interact, reflect and develop shared mental models are necessary for learning to occur. Additionally, organisations must have the willingness to learn from the interim managers. Consequently, it takes a strong belief in learning from both parts (the interim manager and the company) to embrace the potentials of learning. However, the paper encourages more empirical and concurrent research of the relationship between interim management and organisational learning.