Sustainability knowledge management and organisational learning in tourism: current approaches and areas for future development

Abstract

Tourism is one of the major drivers of socio-economic growth. For tourism organisations to remain competitive, they must be able to adapt to the current dynamic scenario where the sector operates. Organisational learning strategies can provide the sector with the knowledge required to transform tourism research and intellectual property into capabilities for the industry and stimulate tourism models with a minimal effect on the environment. Knowledge management involves managing tacit and explicit information in a way that ensures it is available where and when needed. From a knowledge management perspective, environmental learning refers to the processes of acquiring, distributing and using knowledge of the natural environment, involving the processes of socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation of knowledge and its central aim is to improve performance. This article describes how knowledge management and organisational learning can help to achieve a sustainable tourism sector. Sustainability in this context is understood as efforts to progress simultaneously in environmental, societal and economic development. The article argues that the principles of sustainable tourism lead to both improved strategies and avenues for future research, provided they are informed and supported by learning and knowledge management; value co-creation; co-operation and trust-building; corporate social responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour.

Keywords:

• Organisational learning
• knowledge management
• sustainable tourism
• corporate social responsibility
• pro-environmental behaviour
• sustainability knowledge

Disclosure statement

Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad of the Spanish Government for financing the research project ECO2017-88987-R (MINECO/ FEDER;UE), cofinanced from the European Union FEDER funds.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Econom?ıa, Industria y Competitividad of the Spanish Government;Cofinanced from the European Union FEDER funds.

Notes on contributors

Aurora Martínez-Martínez

Dr. Aurora Martínez-Martínez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration at the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena. Originally a CFO, she joined academia after completing her Ph.D. in 2011. She is a member of the International Association for Knowledge Management (IAKM). Her research is focused on knowledge management, organizational learning, and sustainability, and she has published in several top-ranking journals.

Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro

Dr. Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro is Professor in the Business Administration Department of the Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena, Spain. He has taught in a number of universities worldwide, including Coventry University, Toronto University and the Lancaster University. He teaches in the area of Strategic Management, Knowledge Management, Unlearning and ICT. As the person in charge of the Business Administration Research Team, he has supervised three national projects and one international project in the domain of knowledge management.

Alexeis Garcia-Perez

Dr. Alexeis Garcia-Perez is Professor of Management Information Systems at Coventry University and Visiting Research Scholar at Georgetown University. Alexeis holds a PhD degree in Information and Knowledge Management from Cranfield University, UK. His research and teaching focus on the development of sustainable Knowledge Management strategies and tools to improve collaboration and decision making in organisations. He has successfully completed Knowledge Management projects with the UK Ministry of Defence, the British Railway industry and with global engineering companies such as General Electric and Siemens.