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The purpose of this study is to examine empirically the relationship between cultural factors and students’ learning style preferences in the context of the current global convergence in accounting education.

Kolb's Learning Style Inventory and Hofstede's Value Survey Model for Young People were administered to 244 undergraduate students studying accounting in Japanese, Australian and Belgian universities.

The outcome of this research revealed that the student groups from Australia and Belgium tended to be more individualistic in their learning and were more willing to learn by doing, while Japanese students do not prefer to learn by doing, but prefer learning by watching.

The results might be of interest to accounting educators to assist them with the smooth introduction of the International Education Standards (IES) by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the International Accounting Education Standard Board (IAESB).

In this chapter, we examine the impact of pay-for-performance incentives on learning-by-doing. We exploit personnel data on fruit pickers paid under two distinct compensation contracts: a standard piece rate plan and one with an extra one-time bonus tied to output. Under the latter, we observe bunching of performance just above the bonus threshold, suggesting workers distort their behavior in response to the discrete bonus. Such bunching behavior increases as workers gain experience. At the same time, the bonus contract induces considerable learning-by-doing for workers throughout the productivity distribution who presumably hope to one day hit the target, and these improvements significantly outweigh the losses to the firm from the bunching. In contrast, under the standard piece rate contract, we find minimal evidence of bunching and only small performance improvements at the bottom of the productivity distribution. Our results suggest that contract design can help foster learning on the job, underscoring the importance of dynamic considerations in principle-agent models.

Discusses the impact of high wages and investment strategies in physical and human capital on eastern Germany post unification. Introduces the concept of learning‐by‐doing as an externality of high quality investment. Provides some eclectic arguments in support of learning‐by‐doing effects which may be used to partly replace costly, publicly financed vocational training programmes.

The authors investigate whether firms in learning-intensive industries are more prone to bankruptcy and how this shapes a firm's financing choices.

Industry learning estimates based on US manufacturing firms are obtained from the study of Balasubramanian and Lieberman (2010; 2011), who collected these estimates from the US Census Bureau. Merging the learning estimates with data from Compustat gives us a final sample of 6,138 publicly-traded US manufacturing firms (56,930 firm-years) between 1973 and 2000. The authors use both OLS and IV estimation approaches to test the hypotheses.

The findings confirm that firms operating in learning-intensive industries have a higher threat of bankruptcy. The authors also find that a debt-intensive capital structure exacerbates the threat of bankruptcy; therefore, firms in such industries have a significantly lower reliance on debt financing.

In the current turbulent business environment, managers operating in learning-intensive industries need to be more careful while making financing choices between debt and equity, and they can explore sources of financing that go beyond the capital markets.

No study so far has examined how industry learning intensity, a key industry characteristic, makes firms more prone to bankruptcy, and how this threat of bankruptcy results in more conservative financing choices. By integrating the theoretical perspectives from the structure–conduct–performance (SCP), transaction cost economics (TCE) and threat rigidity paradigms, this paper contributes to the literature by adding the industry learning environment as a novel determinant of firm financing choices and the threat of bankruptcy.

As humanitarian organizations often operate in highly volatile environments, a good understanding of their learning mechanisms would improve the knowledge acquisition and retention in these organizations, and complement the formal logistics education and training for their relief staff. The paper explores the following research question: what learning mechanisms are used by humanitarian organizations to acquire sufficient knowledge for their logistics operations.

The paper opts for a theoretical study based on the existing literature. We apply organizational learning theory to examine the learning process and mechanisms of humanitarian organizations. An actual case is used to validate the findings.

The study develops a theoretical framework for the learning mechanism of humanitarian organizations, and reports four learning mechanisms: learning by hiring, learning by doing, learning by observing, and learning by searching. Five propositions are proposed for empirical validation.

Because of the theoretical nature of the study, the research is still an exploratory one. The organization learning literature employed is not comprehensive. Researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper includes implications for humanitarian organization to better manage their learning processes, improve the effectiveness of their knowledge management, and benefit more disaster-affected people.

This paper fills a gap in the learning processes and knowledge management of humanitarian organizations.

The manufacturing industry is a well-known source of interventions adapted to solve problems in the construction industry. The use of Training-Within-Industry (TWI) is one such intervention adopted in the construction industry to solve the construction problem relating to occupational health and safety (OHS). The objectives of TWI are to help the industry to transfer knowledge and skills from management to the employees. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to investigate whether TWI can reduce OHS problems by promoting “learning by doing” on construction sites.

A case-based-research method was used to investigate the reported OHS problems in the construction industry in South Africa. The data were quantitative and qualitative in nature; the questionnaire survey, semi-structured interview and focus group interview techniques were used to collect data in the study.

The findings provide a better understanding of the human contributions influencing the behaviour of people causing accidents on construction sites. The data show that construction project leaders struggle to promote “learning by doing” because of inappropriate behaviour, lack of communication and inadequate training provided to new workers on construction sites. Also, there is significant scope for TWI deployment in construction because of the inability of supervisors or management to promote “learning by doing” on construction sites.

Based on the research findings, it is discovered that OHS is a serious concern in the construction industry. Therefore, the adoption of learning by doing on a construction site would help to improve OHS outcome.

The study highlights the need to introduce TWI on construction sites to reduce human failure causing accidents. TWI could lead to improving the knowledge- and skills-transfer programmes for construction workers in favour of better safety performance.

Why are some lean workfloor teams able to improve their already high performance, over time, and others not? By studying teams' and leaders' behaviour-value patterns, this abductive field study uncovers a dynamic capability at the team level.

Various methods were employed over three consecutive years to thoroughly examine five initially high-performing lean workfloor teams, including their leaders. These methods encompassed micro-behavioural coding of 59 h of film footage, surveys, individual and group interviews, participant observation and archival data, involving objective and perceptual team-performance indicators. Two of the five teams continued to improve and perform highly.

Continuously improving high lean team performance is found to be associated with (1) team behaviours such as frequent performance monitoring, information sharing, peer support and process improvement; (2) team leaders who balance, over time, task- and relations-oriented behaviours; (3) higher-level leaders who keep offering the team face-to-face support, strategic clarity and tangible resources; (4) these three actors' endorsement of self-transcendence and openness-to-change work values and alignment, over time, with their behaviours; and (5) coactive vicarious learning-by-doing as a “stable collective activity pattern” among team, team leader, and higher-level leadership.

Since lean has been undertheorised, the authors invoked insights from organisational behaviour and management theories, in combination with various fine- and coarse-grained data, over time. The authors uncovered actors' behaviour-value patterns and a collective learning-by-doing pattern that may explain continuous lean team performance improvement. Four theory-enriching propositions were developed and visualised in a refined model which may already benefit lean practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to gain more insight into employees' on‐the‐job learning. Its specific purpose is to develop and validate a classification of on‐the‐job learning activities and learning themes, focusing on the nursing profession in particular.

Two successive studies were conducted for this purpose. In the first study in‐depth interviews with 20 Dutch nurses were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The content validity of the categories found in the first study was investigated in the second study by interviewing 17 supervisors and eight educators from different hospitals in The Netherlands.

The paper finds that the main categories of learning activities are: learning by doing one's regular job, learning by applying something new in the job, learning by social interaction with colleagues, learning by theory or supervision, and learning by reflection. First‐order learning activities and second‐order learning activities can be distinguished. The main categories of on‐the‐job learning themes are: the technical‐practical domain, the socio‐emotional domain, the organisational domain, the developmental domain, and a pro‐active attitude to work.

The validation study was conducted by the same researchers as the first study. The findings are based on one profession (nursing) in one country (The Netherlands).

The categories can be used by nurse educators and health sector managers/trainers to develop comprehensive and structured intervention methods for the improvement of on‐the‐job learning which do justice to the complexity and diversity of on‐the‐job learning by nurses. HR (development) professionals can use the classification as part of a competence management and development system.

The study provides a detailed, complete and multi‐dimensional explication of nurses' on‐the‐job learning activities and learning themes, grounding the classification and framework in empirical data and using multiple data sources.

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish clearly between industry (ILC) and product lifecycle (PLC) models and to elucidate their different ramifications for organizational learning and knowledge.

The authors examine existing knowledge on ILCs and PLCs to highlight the differences and similarities and develop a framework with implications for learning and innovation in digital manufacturing industries.

The authors identify and associate one dominant type of learning with each phase of the ILC: learning-by-participating in the introduction phase, learning-by-feedback in the growth phase, vicarious learning in the maturity phase and learning-by-memory in the decline phase. The study also provides insight into how different types of learning influence PLC in digital innovation. From this perspective, learning-by-feedback is crucial to co-creation, co-production and open innovation. Similarly, learning-by-doing and learning-by-memory are essential to production and usage stages, respectively.

The conceptual development in this paper follows a somewhat critical but ultimately elucidative analysis that highlights important research avenues in the interplay of PLC/ILC, organizational learning and digital innovation.

This paper clarifies a perennial theoretical problem by differentiating two concepts often conflated in the literature. More importantly, it contributes to the knowledge management literature by shedding light on the connection of ILC and PLC theories to different types of organizational learning.

There is a growing interest in exploring the interface between international marketing and entrepreneurial opportunities. This paper contributes by defining and elucidating entrepreneurial action in early internationalising software firms and the corresponding emergent international marketing activities. Entrepreneurial action in early internationalising software firms is explored through the operationalisation of a reconceptualised entrepreneurial opportunity construct and the associated entrepreneurial learning processes.

The paper adopts an inductive approach, which traces the evolution of five early internationalising propriety software South African firms; from the new venture idea to the establishment of the international entrepreneurial opportunity.

The findings provide support for entrepreneurial action guided by: prior industry experience, entrepreneurial alertness, opportunity confidence and two levels of entrepreneurial learning; experiential and double-loop learning. Learning by doing allows for the continuous evaluation of the new venture idea leading to the international entrepreneurial opportunity. Market responsiveness and continuous product development resulting in the emergence of the firm's inward international marketing activities constitute the key outcomes of entrepreneurial action.

The study is limited to a specific technology context, which is young software firms whose inward directed internationalisation activities coalesce around the development of their proprietary software technology.

Based on an original dataset of early internationalising software firms from South Africa, this paper inductively operationalises and conceptualises entrepreneurial action as the combined interaction of four key constructs: contingent effects, attitudes to opportunities, learning by doing and entrepreneurial activities leading to the firm's inward international marketing activities and a diversified international client and end-user base.