Developing Learning Organizations for Achievement of Competitive Advantages in Enterprises in Bosnia and Hercegovina

It is a common view in both theory and practice of modern management that enterprises of the 21st century must seek new sources to build and maintain competitive advantage in the dynamic and uncertain global market. In this context, individual and organizational learning are identified as significant sources of competitiveness. Consequently, the knowledge we gain from learning and its application ensures that companies differentiate from their competitors who are very hard to copy and imitate. In addition, organizational learning generates the changes in cognitive and behavioral nature, and as such, significantly increases the organization's ability to innovate and increase its adaptability in complex and unpredictable environment. The implementation of the concept of learning organization, which implies "double loop learning", i.e. changing the underlying assumptions, mental components and way of thinking is particularly important for companies that operate in the conditions of the transition period from ex-socialist economy to a new cognitive stage capitalism and new socially responsible ways of market business. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to focus not only on theoretical critical review of the concept of the learning organization, but also to shed light on the analysis of the assumptions for the implementation of this concept in the context of building a competitive advantage in Bosnian enterprises. The analysis will be based on the results of an empirical study on the degree of the implementation of learning organizations within a hundred of Bosnian enterprises, conducted back in 2012.