Do it My Way, it Will Be Easier on the Both of Us: 'Changing the Learning'

摘要

The purpose of this exploratory study was to attempt to discover the reasons people do not at first perform their task in the approved method while on the job. Hence, the research question was why do new employees initially find a different way or a better way for the task rather than using the method shown. The researcher created the term Changing the learning or (CL) for this study which describes this behavior.;The study looked at grounds maintenance operators from a golf course maintenance company. Self-administered surveys were sent to 31 locations in four regions of the United States and 205 operator surveys responses were tabulated to compute their CL tendency. The operators' answers were compared to the answers given by 55 Supervisors along with the Company's Human Resource Department.;This study found that 42.2% of the respondents did change the method of performing given work tasks. The results also demonstrated a lack of significant differences between different education levels (F= 1.588, p > .05), age (F= .136, p >.05), race (F = .1.823, p > .06) and experience (F= 1.156, p >.05). The operators endorsed five work place learning theories in explaining why they changed the learning: Proactive employees (ƒ =88.9%), Prosocial non-compliant behavior (ƒ =87.8%), Workarounds (ƒ =86.7%), LMX model (ƒ =77.8%) and Non-compliant behavior (ƒ =68.9%). Based on the findings, future research should further examine the reasons and prevalence of CL across different industries and consider behavioral characteristics that might be common among learning changers.