Effects of Newcomer Practicing on Cross-level Learning Distortions

Abstract

This article fuses variance generation and suppression arguments with the micro-underpinnings of collective learning to bring the socio-emotional context of learning to the foreground. We take a practice-based perspective on cross-level learning distortions to explore non-recursive trade-offs between variance generation and variance suppression as newcomers adapt to established groups and as groups react to newcomers. Our typology first disaggregates the effects of sociality and emotionality to describe four patterns of context-contingent individual practicing: experimenting, emulating, bracketing and impersonating. We then explain why groups operating in distinct contexts may systematically ignore or discount two specific types of individual departures from collective norms: outliers (infrequent, significant deviations) and clusters (frequent, incremental changes). Our theoretical predictions add value to managers by unpacking the contextual contingencies that systematically pattern individual and collective learning and by suggesting specific interventions for preventing or alleviating learning disorders.

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