I booked a long overdue break from my studies yesterday in order to reflect on some of my recent learnings both in academia and in practice this week. My B810 tutor was adamant that reflective learning (and by extension, experiential learning) were models we should embrace. One of the main conclusions I picked up from the tutorial was that there are two different types of learning styles with respect to middle managers. The first type I discovered was accommodative. This is largely an experiential approach to learning reliant upon intuition rather than logic. The second important type is assimilative. This type of learning is more concerned with concepts and what David Kolb (1976) called reflective observation.
As Kolb explains, middle managers solve problems in one of two ways using these learning styles. The first of these problem-solving strategies is referred to as successive scanning and the second of which is referred to as simultaneous scanning. Kolb uses these intricate differences to inform his conclusion, which stipulates that learning should be pursued in the same way that productivity or profit is pursued.
Luckily, I didn’t spend the whole day reading into the literature, I did manage to do other things.
1. I joined the People Geek community – which is an online community dedicated to promoting the growth of over 35,000 HR professionals across the globe. The community is managed by the brilliant DeMario Bell who I am indebted to for extending an invitation.
2. I found a bit of time in the morning to reach out to Prof. Peter Ackers at Loughborough University to discuss his article on HRM in sub-Saharan Africa.
3. I asked a few online friends where the best place to study is in London, and the consensus seems to be - The British Library reading room.
What did I learn about myself whilst I was on my reflective break? Well, I came to the realisation that fundamentally, my learning style is as equally as assimilative as it is accommodative.
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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was inspired by the work of David A. Kolb (1976) in a California Management Review article entitled “Management and the Learning Process”.