Individuals in the workplace always face work-related failures – ranging from small operational errors to large, strategic fiascos. Failure can stigmatize an individual’s career and reputation. Consequently, most are unwilling to engage in dialogue on failure by talking about or sharing their failure experience. Yet, failure often provides an invaluable opportunity from which to learn, and to potentially avoid its re-occurrence. Failure also provides the knowledge and impetus to improve performance. Indeed, scholars have argued that individuals need to share their failure experience in order to provide opportunity for themselves and others to learn from such experience. However, we know little about the conditions under which individuals are willing to share their failure experience. To advance our understanding of learning from failure, we draw upon research from organizational learning, knowledge sharing, and social networks to explore the following two important questions: (A) What are factors that influence the willingness of an individual to share failure experience? (B) With whom would an individual be more (or less) likely to share failure experience?
Working papers
Sharing success and failure and their performance consequences
Factors influencing sharing different types of failure and consequences of such sharing
How firms respond to competitors' failure
Publications and Presentations
Dahlin, K.D., Chuang, Y.T., and Roulet, T.J. 2018. Opportunity, motivation, and ability to learn from failure and errors: Review, synthesis, and ways to move forward. Academy of Management Annals, 12: 252-277.
Good, J., Chuang, Y.T., Boey, A., and Hu, C. 2018. Roles of emotion regulation and situational learning in learning from failure behavior. Academy of Management Annual Meetings, Chicago, IL.
Dahlin, K. and Chuang, Y.T. 2018. Spurious learning from failure and success. Carnegie School of Organizational Learning 2018 Conference, Pacific Grove, CA.
Boey, A. and Chuang, Y.T., 2016. Symposium organizers, Learning from organizational errors and failures. Academy of Management Annual Meetings, Anaheim, CA.
Boey, A. and Chuang, Y.T. 2015. Sharing experience of failure at the workplace. ASAC, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Zaheer, S, Ginsburg, L., Chuang, Y.T., and Grace, S. L. 2015. Patient safety climate (PSC) perceptions of front-line staff in acute care hospitals: Examining the role of ease of reporting, unit norms of openness, and participative leadership. Health Care Management Review, 40: 13-23.
Ginsburg, L., Chuang, Y.T., Berta, W.B., Norton, P.G., Ng, P., Tregunno, D., and Richardson, J., 2010. The relationship between organizational leadership for safety and learning from patient safety events. Health Services Research, 45: 607-632.
Ginsburg, L. Chuang, Y.T. et al., 2009. Development of a measure of learning from patient safety events. Health Services Research, 44: 2123-2147.
Ginsburg, L., Chuang, Y.T., et al., 2009. Categorizing errors and adverse events for learning: The provider perspective. Healthcare Quarterly, 12, 154-160.
Chuang, Y.T., Ginsburg, L., and Berta, W. B. 2007. Learning from preventable adverse events in healthcare organizations: A multi-level model of learning and propositions. Health Care Management Review, 32(4): 330-340.
