Changing Routines: A Process Model of Vicarious Group Learning in Pharmaceutical R&D
通过对一家制药公司药物开发团队的实地研究，揭示了群体如何通过替代性学习（借鉴其他群体的经验）改变惯例，并识别出识别、翻译、采纳和延续四个子过程。
Prior research has indicated that groups frequently change their routines drawing on the experience of others and that this has significant performance effects. But how group routine change occurs through this process of vicarious learning is not clear. Using a qualitative field study of drug development teams in one pharmaceutical firm, I examine how groups change routines drawing on the prior related experience of other groups. An inductive analysis suggests that this process does not follow the simple find-and-copy model often assumed in the literature and identifies four distinct subprocesses involved: identification, translation, adoption, and continuation. This process model adds to understanding of vicarious learning by showing that it is a more varied process than it is commonly construed to be and that not only experience-seeking groups, but also groups that are the source of the experience, play important and shifting roles throughout. Thus, this study contributes to theories about how groups change their routines by elucidating how they alter their routines through vicarious learning.