Coactive Vicarious Learning: Toward a Relational Theory of Vicarious Learning in Organizations

Myers · Team Learning, Trust & Interpersonal · Academy of Management Review · 2018 · Paywalled

Myers's conceptual paper challenges, and aims to complement, the view, built on Bandura's social learning theory, that vicarious learning at work is a one-way, intrapersonal process of observing a model and imitating what they did. Integrating Kolb's experiential learning with Mead's symbolic interactionism, it proposes coactive vicarious learning: a discursive process in which a model and a learner intentionally share and jointly process the model's work experience to co-construct an emergent, situated understanding of it. The model becomes a co-creator rather than merely the provider of something to observe, the two roles can fade somewhat after a few exchanges, and learning runs both ways. Because the theory sits at the level of the dyad, what each person takes away depends on the relationship and on their own background.

Each interaction combines three elements that Myers treats as multiplicative: experience, the raw material; analysis, the questions and comparisons that refine it; and support, the social or emotional assistance that scaffolds the rest. Analysis without support may come across as criticism and make the model less likely to share full details. Six propositions follow: engagement rises with relationship quality, positive affect and familiarity, with proximity, helping roles and interdependent tasks, and with learning orientation and existing knowledge; and it builds knowledge, individual capacity (transactive memory, perspective taking, self-efficacy) and the pair's relational capacity (shared mental models, trust, affective commitment).

The bridge to psychological safety is ours. Myers calls vicarious learning potentially risky, since it exposes an experience to analysis and can admit a lack of knowledge, and argues that support helps people share experiences that might be embarrassing, such as a failure. We read the same mechanism as one route by which silence is taught, since a story of what happened to someone who spoke up is also processed together and passed on; Myers flags such retelling chains for future research. It is a theory paper with no data and untested propositions, and it assumes repertoire growth is generally beneficial while noting that misapplying a lesson warrants study.

Myers, C.G. (2018) 'Coactive vicarious learning: Toward a relational theory of vicarious learning in organizations', Academy of Management Review, 43(4), pp. 610-634.

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