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In this paper, we suggest a contemporary view of learning during the process of organizational socialization. The relationship between learning and socialization is implicit in much of the existing socialization literature. In an attempt to make this research more explicit, we suggest a theoretical approach to the actual learning processes that underlie workers’ socialization experiences. In order to accomplish this, we review previous work on socialization, information seeking and feedback seeking during socialization, and learning. In doing so we describe the learning process that underlies socialization, highlighting the beginning of the process, the role of information during the process, and integrating three different types of learning (planned, deutero, and meta) into the process of organizational socialization. In addition, we also discuss the implications of these three types of learning during the process of socialization and directions in future research on the socialization process.

I begin with a dispute over a fox hunt, by which to understand the law of tangible property, then develop that metaphor for the major types of intellectual property. I start with domestic U.S. patent law for the sake of concreteness, and generalize to other jurisdictions and types of intellectual property. In the latter parts of the paper I discuss the international implications of intellectual property, including especially the effects of information spillovers. The last part of the paper describes the hazards in analogizing “trade” in intellectual property rights to trade in goods, and particularly in interpreting international patent data. These hazards motivate the search for a structural model specially adapted to the purpose of valuing international intellectual property rights and rules. The goal is to give economists a simple and integrated framework for analyzing intellectual property across time, jurisdiction and regime type, with an eye towards eventually developing other incentive systems that have the advantages of property (such as decentralized decision-making), but fewer of the disadvantages.

This research reviews numerous studies of the relationship between consumer knowledge and external search in conventional marketing channels to investigate differences among these studies that have produced conflicting results. The findings provide a benchmark for future researchers and practitioners seeking to gain insight into consumer information search processes unfolding in the new environment of online, mobile, and social networking channels.

A meta-analysis of an extensive array of empirical studies of the relationship between consumer knowledge and external information search was conducted. Regression analysis was used to test whether certain characteristics in the studies can explain variability in the effect sizes in which effect sizes are entered as dependent variables and moderators as independent variables.

Objective and subjective knowledge tend to increase search, while direct experience tends to reduce search. Consumers with higher objective knowledge search more when pursuing credence products. However, they search relatively less when pursuing search products. Consumers with higher subjective knowledge are much more likely to search in the context of experience products, but as is the case for objective knowledge having little effect on search for experience products, subjective knowledge has no significant effect on information seeking for search products. In addition, objective knowledge facilitates more information search in a complex decision-making context while higher subjective knowledge fosters more external information search in a simple decision-marketing context. Finally, the findings indicate that the knowledge search relationship reflects strong linkage in the pre-Internet era.

Relatively little is known about how the relationship between knowledge and information search varies across different types of products in simple or complex decision-making contexts. This study begins to fill this gap by providing insight into the relative importance of objective knowledge, subjective knowledge, and direct experience in influencing consumer information search activities for search, experience, and credence products in simple or complex decision-making contexts.

Since 2000, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of individuals using the Internet, including for health purposes. Internet usage has increased from 46% of adults in 2000 to 79% in 2010. The purpose of this chapter is to examine changes in one type of Internet usage: online health searching. We examine the impact of traditional digital inequality factors on online health searching, and whether these patterns have changed over time.

Using data from five surveys ranging from 2002 to 2010 (n = 5,967 for all five surveys combined), we examine changing patterns of online health searching over the past decade.

Effects vary by inequality factor and time period examined. Despite the diffusion of the Internet, most of these gaps persist, and even strengthen, over time. Gender, age, and education gaps persist over time and appear to be increasing. An exception to this is the importance of broadband connection.

Since these data were collected, the use of mobile devices to access the Internet has increased. Research is needed on types of access and devices used for online health activities.

Larger scale inequalities play important roles in online health searching. Providing access and skills in evaluating online health information is needed for older and less educated groups. The results of this study have implications for the de-professionalization of medical knowledge.

This is the first study to examine digital inequality factors in online health information seeking over the breadth of this time period.

This article focuses on humanities scholars’ information searching. David Ellis’ model of scholars’ information seeking is taking as a starting point for this study. For understanding the information needs and information seeking habits of humanities scholars, it is crucial to know about the nature of research processes within diverse humanities fields. The study at hand, therefore, starts from the premise that the information searching of humanistic researchers needs to be understood within the framework of the research process, and not as a phenomenon outside of it.

Based on 24 in-depth interviews in archaeology, art history, philosophy, and languages and linguistics, the article examines humanities scholars’ research processes. The purpose of this study is to analyse the research processes, their course and different stages, and to classify these into types. The purpose is also to examine the relationships between the types of research processes and the disciplines studied. Seven types of research processes were identified among scholars working in the fields studied. The types were named the Fly, the Sphinx Moth, the Mole, the Mockingbird, and the Spider.

The findings show that the representatives of a specific humanities discipline did not always proceed in their research in similar ways. There were distinct differences according to discipline, but important differences between scholars belonging to the same discipline could also be observed. The findings indicate that information seeking behaviour cannot be explained by factors that lie outside the researcher and the researcher's subject matter. Another important finding is that humanistic research often does not proceed in linear stages. There is more variability within the research and searching processes within humanities and among representatives of specific disciplines than is often presumed.

The value of a cost-management initiative rests on its ability in producing new and/or more accurate cost information for decision making. As such, insights on antecedents and consequences of using different types of cost information in decision making are important in evaluating cost-management initiatives. Behavioral research paradigm offers researchers a framework to interpret relationships between uses of different types of cost information and individuals’ behaviors. This chapter presents a review of behavioral studies on cost information usage in decision making published in 1998–2007. Findings of the review shows that using different types of cost information in decision making have significant impacts on individuals’ behaviors and uses of cost information are likely to be moderated by various human, system, and market factors.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.