Retail Executives’ Professional Learning Contents

• Autor(a) principal: Lucena, Eduardo de Aquino
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Cunha, Cristiano José Castro de Almeida
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Gestão de Negócios (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://rbgn.fecap.br/RBGN/article/view/1513
• topic: Aprendizagem de Executivos; Aprendizagem Organizacional; Conteúdos de Aprendizagem; Executivos Varejistas.; Aprendizagem Organizacional

The research question that is addressed in thisarticle is the following: what do the executivesfrom small retailing firms learn in their workenvironment? The theoretical framework of thestudy is based on texts from the field of learning.This is a qualitative investigation. Ten interviewswith clothing retail executives were carriedout. Later, these interviews were transcribedand analyzed. In the data analysis stage, twocategories were established in response to theresearch question. Regarding the first, respondentsperceived difficulties (problems) in their workenvironments and obtained specific informationand knowledge in order to deal with thesesituations. So as to overcome different professionaldifficulties, respondents learned about colors andtypes of fabric and about certain manufacturingprocess aspects referring to the clothing soldby their companies. They also declared to havelearned about their companies’ suppliers andabout certain issues referring to sales, and to theaccounting and the financial management of theircompanies. The second category refers to a changein some of the respondents’ habits. This learningcontent refers to predispositions to respond and/or act in situations at their work environments.Respondents reported having changed the waythey related to other people. They emphasizedthat they had learned how to interact with theemployees at their stores and how to carry outsupervision. Differently from other studies, wefound that the retailers’ learning (individuallearning) affected their companies’ learning(organizational learning) through changes incertain aspects of the analyzed companies’organizational structures.Keywords: Managers’ learning. Organizationallearning. Learning contents. Retail executives.