Abstract
PurposeManagers’ work is surrounded by complex environments, from which they need to learn, in order to understand them. However, complexity poses several challenges to managerial learning, for which usually management educational programs have not prepared managers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore such challenges and possible ways to overcome them.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that explores in depth the issue of managerial learning challenges in a complex world. Managers face these challenges during their practice, yet sometimes management education has not prepared them for this.FindingsThree managerial learning challenges due to complexity are identified. First, through cognition and cognitive structures, managers simplify the world around them. Nevertheless, biases, inertia and inaccuracy emerge, as managers’ mental models are not truly capable of capturing complexity. Second, managers look for information to aid them in their learning processes, but the information they gather is sometimes bogus, invalid or unfounded. Third, managers could seek for support from management research to improve their learning. However, given management research intricacies, limitations and particularities, a learning challenge emerges as well, as management research has been rarely capable to capture complexity.Originality/valueHaving explored these managerial learning challenges due to complexity, this paper discusses a carefulness-based management learning ideal, which by being underpinned by the quality of carefulness and the related concepts of critical thinking, negative capability and a deep learning style, suggests a potential new way to approach management learning in light of complexity.
Highlights
Managers operate in complexity, which could be difficult to understand (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993; Jenkins, 2014; McMillan, 2004; Reed and Defillippi, 1990; Ropes, 2015)
To make sense of their complex environments, managers usually go through an “interpretative process aimed at the understanding of reality” (Richardson, 2011, p. 290)
Managers engage in a learning process to figure out what is going on, in order to know what to do (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014; Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2015)
Summary
Managers operate in complexity, which could be difficult to understand (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993; Jenkins, 2014; McMillan, 2004; Reed and Defillippi, 1990; Ropes, 2015). Researchers have contested this classic perspective on the resource-based view again, by arguing that what is perhaps more important is to consider the role that managers play in managing an organization’s resources (Chadwick et al, 2014; Holcomb et al, 2009) This is an example of how management thinking in management research continues progressing and the potential dangers for practitioners from blindly following theories in the making. The classical physics inheritance in management research, as in many other social sciences, is unmistakable, illustrated, for example, in the obsession with building sometimes over-simplistic cause-effect theories, making important simplifications when theorizing, minimizing the role of complexity and maximizing claims of understanding of phenomena. Experiments’ implications for management practice can be limited, since controlled conditions of experiments differ considerably from the natural contexts of management practice Another issue is that as simplistic theories emerge and propagate, they can come to influence management practice even in spite of evidence against them. Risks exist if management practitioners blindly follow management research theories
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