Job Rotation as an Organizational Learning Mechanism: From Short-term Loss to Long-term Gain

Abstract

Despite its losses, job rotation has long been an established organizational practice across sectors. This study examines when and why short-term losses from job rotation are transformed into long-term gains through an organizational learning process. Existing job-rotation research has identified both losses and gains, but has paid less attention to how these effects are connected through a learning process unfolding over time. This study argues that the transition from short-term losses to long-term gains does not occur automatically. Immediately after job rotation, employees experience practice discontinuity. Learning then begins when employees re-enter practice in a new role and participate in the actual work of that role. The central mechanism proposed in this study is interaction-based reconstruction, through which employees and their colleagues reconstruct the meaning of work and context-sensitive standards of judgment and performance. Through this process, individual learning can expand into interpersonal or local-level learning. When the learning generated through this reconstruction is sustained over time and retained for reuse at the organizational level, it can further develop into organizational learning capability. However, this transition unfolds as a conditional learning process and may stall at the individual or local level. The proposed mechanism provides implications for HRD managers and practitioners to diagnose the losses that arise immediately after job rotation from a learning perspective, identify potential stall points, and support the sustained reuse of learning.