Systems thinking to facilitate "double loop" learning in tourism industry: a COVID-19 response strategy

ABSTRACT

It is evident there is an urgent need for tourism companies to build highly responsive learning systems to adapt to COVID-19 threats and beyond. As such, only learning tourism companies that promote inquiry, challenging current actions, and departing away from adopted assumptions will be able to survive. However, there is paucity of studies exploring effective learning methods in tourism companies to adapt to unpredictable crisis consequences. This study argues that systems thinking approach for service delivery design can operationalize double loop learning in tourism companies of finding alternative service offerings. An exploratory case study was conducted in a leading cruise group company in Vietnam. Results show that systems thinking activated double-loop learning by promoting three different drivers systematic judges and acts, problem-based task force teams, and service innovation. This paper theorizes systems thinking with double-loop learning as an organizational means to help tourism companies survive during COVID-19 global tragedy, and to transform their service offerings. It also extends current understanding of tourism companies' organisational learning by incorporating double loop learning with structural design issues based on the lens of organic structures and introduces managers of tourism companies to the significance of organic structures for competitive advantage creation during crisis. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Sustainable Tourism is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)