Linking organisational commitment with continuous learning through peripheral vision and procedural memory

Under some circumstances such as the lack of commitment of peers or the imposition of excessive authority, many employees tend to turn a blind eye to either the development of new, more effective procedures or recognise that new or modified customer needs have developed. In these situations, organisational commitment is a preliminary step not only to the effective implementation of current procedures but also to questioning values of the organisation and future needs of customers. This study proposes that organisational commitment helps alleviate these problems by maintaining an ambidextrous perspective between procedural memory and peripheral vision to promote continuous learning. This research has therefore been conducted to explain both conceptually and empirically how peripheral vision could interact with and influence procedural memory, and hence facilitate continuous learning (CL) within the business. While peripheral vision is often associated with developing and supporting knowledge structures for the exploration of new opportunities and with identifying and addressing new clients, many consider these knowledge structures as examples of organisational routines and procedures, and thus as aspects of the ‘procedural memory’ of an organisation. To contribute to the understanding of these relationships, this study addresses two questions: (1) Are outcomes of CL processes within the organisation determined by the presence of organisational procedural memory – both skills and knowledge, and (2) Does an improved peripheral vision result in higher levels of learning? After using PLS-SEM on a sample of 203 employees of Spanish banks, our findings support the theory that peripheral vision facilitates the emergence of new and unconventional behaviours within a culture, which in turn has a positive effect on the firm’s continuous learning.