Mitigating work conditions that can inhibit learning from errors: Benefits of error management climate perceptions.

Introduction: Professionals do not always learn from their errors; rather, the way in which professionals experience errors and their work environment may not foster, but can rather inhibit error learning. In the wake of a series of accounting scandals, including Royal Ahold in Netherlands, Lehman Brothers in the United States, and Wirecard in Germany, within the context of financial auditing, we explore four audit-specific conditions at the workplace that could be negatively associated with learning: small error consequences, routine-type errors, negative emotions, and high time pressure. Then, we examine how perceptions of an open or blame error management climate (EMC) moderate the negative relationship between the four work conditions and learning from errors. Methods: Using an experiential questionnaire approach, we analyze data provided by 141 Dutch auditors across all hierarchical ranks from two audit firms. Results: Our results show that open EMC perceptions mitigate the negative relationship between negative emotions and error learning, as well as the negative relationship between time pressure and error learning. While we expected that blame EMC perceptions would exacerbate the negative relationship between negative emotions and error learning, we find a mitigating effect of low blame EMC perceptions. Further, and contrary to our expectations, we find that blame EMC perceptions mitigate the negative relationship between small error consequences and error learning, so that overall, more error learning takes place regardless of consequences when participants experience a blame EMC. Post-hoc analyses reveal that there is in fact an inverted- U-shaped relationship between time pressure and error learning. Discussion: We derive several recommendations for future research, and our findings generate specific implications on how (audit) organizations can foster learning from errors.

Supporting the well-being of new university teachers through teacher professional development.

Over the last decades, changes within higher education have created increased pressure and uncertainty for academics, increasing their risk for cognitive, behavioral, physical, as well as psychological issues due to high job demands. Specifically, for new academics in teaching roles, their lack of knowledge and skills can contribute to a negative effect of these job demands on their well-being. This study therefore explored how teaching-related professional development programs can enhance new university teachers' well-being, through semi-structured interviews with 10 university teachers participating in such a program at a mid-sized Dutch university. We pay special attention to the relationship between specific learning activities integrated in the program (such as learning communities, formal workshops, and reflecting) and various dimensions of the psychological model of well-being by Ryff and Keyes (such as self-acceptance, autonomy, environmental mastery, and positive relationships). Using co-occurrence analysis and content analysis, we found that different learning activities had distinct relationships with different well-being facets. For example, formal workshops were mainly related to environmental mastery, a purpose in life and personal growth, while reflecting seemed to be especially connected to teachers' self-acceptance, and participating in a learning community was mainly related to positive relations with others and personal growth. Our findings have implications for research on teacher well-being as well as for the design of professional development programs for higher education teaching staff.