• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.539-560
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• 2001

This paper aims to critically review the geographical literature on learning and proximity that stresses the role of the regions and geographical proximity in sustaining competitive advantage, and to conceptualize a relational/organizational perspective on the sources of knowledge and learning in the firm. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the geographical literature lacks the deliberate scrutiny of how learning occurs in the firm and where the sources of knowledge and learning come from. Secondly, I attempt to elaborate the concept of proximity through a relational/organizational perspective. Thirdly, I delve into how learning takes place and is realized in the firm through communities in the firm such as communities of practice, epistemic communities and task-force teams and how such communities in the firm generate knowledge and sustain loaming by drawing on relational/organizational proximity. This paper concludes by claiming that the sources of learning exist in organizational spaces, with complex geographies mobilizing distributed knowledge and competences and combining varied forms of knowledge beyond the simple demarcation of tacit and codified knowledge.