*Barriers to Interorganizational Learning for Innovation: A Case Study of a Sustainable Tourism… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112555*

of knowledge itself that makes learning difficult (explicit knowledge is easier to be acquired than tacit knowledge) or by the organizational culture that is not supporting learning. These factors can be characteristics of individuals, groups or organizations and as such become action-personal, structural-organizational or societalenvironmental barriers to learning [12]. Action-personal barriers are characterized by individual thinking, attitudes and behavior for example the lack of decision-making power of an actor or their lack of complementing perspectives [35, 36] that prevent new knowledge to stick to existing knowledge. Structural-organizational barriers can be found on the organizational level and are rooted in organizational strategy, technology, culture and formal regulations for example the lack of access to information and knowledge [37]. Finally, Societal-environmental barriers are found on the interorganizational level and examples are lack of cooperation or a high level of conflicts and competition among stakeholders. Barriers to learning are connected to the way knowledge is absorbed and shared between individuals and organizations; when little or no knowledge is shared, there is a barrier to learning on one or more levels [28]. At the level of the destination, knowledge sticks to a multitude of individuals, groups and organizations like service, hospitality and experience providers, public organizations and the DMO. For tourism actors to learn from the certification process, existing knowledge needs to be integrated with new knowledge. Knowledge integration has been defined as the process through which specialized knowledge is drawn together and combined to create new knowledge [31, 32]. The role of accumulating and integrating knowledge resources for innovation in tourism has received considerable attention in the literature [28, 30, 38]. Surprisingly, barriers and inhibitors of interorganizational learning and innovation, that stop or delay the flow of knowledge between stakeholders and are standing in the way of innovation processes [39] have not been studied as much in the context of tourism.
