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The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities for expansive learning during organisational change. It considers the introduction of “lean production” as a disturbance to the existing work practices.

The paper considers two case studies of “lean production” training with production workers in manufacturing firms. Data for the study consisted of semi-structured interviews, observations of workers during work and training. Engeström’s third-generation cultural historical activity theory was used as the key theoretical tool for analysis.

The study found that the introduction of and training for “lean production” did not lead to expansive learning. The training did not afford spaces to address the fundamental contradictions between the “earning a living” and ”productivity” motives of work.

Further research on the different kinds of “spaces” for learning could lead to greater insights into the affordances of expansive learning in workplaces. In particular, the concept of “third space” is useful in such an endeavour.

Training designed to increase productivity could integrate more discussions about what workers themselves should expect to gain from increased productivity.

The paper presents a critical perspective on recent case studies of workplace training at a time when workforce development and “lean production” are uncritically promulgated as beneficial. It highlights the opportunities that exist for critical educators to make interventions in the interests of the workers.

The purpose of this paper is to report the entrepreneurial competencies of women entrepreneurs who used information marketing businesses for their business-related education.

A questionnaire-based survey of female entrepreneurs who engaged with one information marketing business was conducted. This study utilized Mitchelmore and Rowley’s (2013) survey instrument, Female Entrepreneurial Competencies (FEC), to analyse the four main entrepreneurial competency clusters: personal and relationship, business and management, entrepreneurial, and human relations competencies. Numeric data were collected via survey from women who engaged with a single information marketing company through e-mail and social media. Using descriptive analysis, the participants’ responses were assessed for the purpose of analysing the self-perceptions of their entrepreneurial competency abilities.

The research found women ranked their competencies in the following order, from highest to lowest: personal and relationship, entrepreneurial, business and management, and human relations. The majority of women who engaged in this research’s information marketing business were middle-aged or slightly younger (between ages 26 and 44), highly educated, and owned a relatively new business.

This study is the first to offer analysis of the entrepreneurial competencies of women entrepreneurs who utilize information marketing businesses for their business-related education. By identifying the entrepreneurial competencies of this subset of women, information marketing businesses could better focus their educational tools to meet the women’s competency needs.

This introductory essay attempts to illustrate the emancipatory intent of organizational learning (OL) by connecting its aims and aspirations to prominent themes of critical organization study, including the emancipatory understanding of “learning” by OL, how OL engages the “dialectic of enlightenment,” and its prioritizing of “communicative action” as the means for reflection and transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to ask how we can think about critical reflection as a pedagogical practice given the “confessional turn”. By the “confessional turn” the author refers to the idea that “subjective, autobiographical and confessional modes of expression” have expanded exponentially across a wide range of social spheres, including education, the legal system, the media and the workplace. Examining these developments, this paper asks what these debates on critical reflection and confession mean for pedagogical practice.

The main approach is a review of key debates in the literature on critical reflection and also in the wider social sciences.

The discussion compares different debates. Thus it shows that for critics, the turn to the “first person” technologies is narcissistic, psychologistic and de‐politicising. On this view, critical reflective practice might be understood as an individualistic and individualising pedagogy in spite of its claims to be critical. The paper discusses how in contrast, others see this move to talk about the subjective and the self as an extension of the feminist project of the personal is political – i.e. that personal stories, feelings and issues have social and political roots and consequences. For them, reflection can be critical, leading to political consciousness‐raising, i.e. a new awareness about social, political and personal processes. It finishes by examining the view that the idea of reflexivity might help us out of the conflict between these debates.

The paper poses a number of questions in relation to critical reflection that can be taken up by practitioners in the field.

The paper brings new literature to bear on the practice of critical reflection and raises important questions relevant to academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to present the adoption and application of the causal mapping method for cognitive distances measurement in the multicultural domain.

Causal mapping was used to estimate differences in mental models between participants. The developed method was applied in a multicultural setting for the selection of teaching cases.

In the main study, 129 people participated in the test. Overall, 7,217 relationships were tested. A set of demographic variables were used to test the reliability and external validity of the method. The method proved to be reliable and easy to apply. A smaller second study is an application example of the method.

The main study proposes a formula for distance ratio calculation. Moreover, this formula proved to be externally valid and reliable. Thus, it is of interest for further research in this domain.

Practitioners are provided with a tool for the analysis of intercultural differences with the example of the perception of cultural values to develop a better understanding and improve education in a multicultural setting. Study 2 proposes an example of the methodology application.

This is the first application of causal mapping in the field of values research performed in a multicultural education setting. The formula for comparing causal maps is improved upon, and an application for the field of multicultural university classes is provided.

Research reveals alarming results on the prevalence of the dishonest consumer behaviour known as deshopping. Deshopping is the “deliberate return of goods for reasons other than actual faults in the product, in its pure form premeditated prior to and during the consumption experience”. In effect this means buying something with no intention of keeping it. The authors consider the implications of deshopping and retailers’ prevention of deshopping, exploring the research undertaken to date and the methodology for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how organizational learning processes influence perceived organizational performance and examine the moderating roles of organizational justice and trust in managers therein.

This study develops a theoretical model to exhibit how knowledge acquisition and transfer activities influence perceived organizational performance. Data were collected from 515 respondents and analyzed by PROCESS macro for SPSS.

This study found that feedback learning flows are strongly mediated between learning stocks and organizational performance. It also found that organizational justice moderates the effect of learning stocks on organizational performance through feed-forward learning flows, while trust in manager moderates the effect of learning stocks on organizational performance through feedback learning flows.

This study has a limitation in which it uses self-report data to measure all constructs. The objective measure may be necessary for future study.

The implications of this study are twofold. First, it finds that the higher organizational justice, the better the transfer of knowledge from the bottom up. When firms need to explore new knowledge, fairness in procedure and the distribution system is critical. Second, the higher the trust in management, the better the transfer of knowledge from the top down. The role of managers is instrumental in persuading employees and disseminating knowledge.

Combining functionalist and critical perspectives and developing a theoretical model, this study contributes to the understanding of how trust and justice facilitate learning activities within organizations.

This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accounting's top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accounting's top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accounting's ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accounting's top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.