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Managers’ work is surrounded by complex environments, from which they need to learn, in order to understand them. However, complexity poses several challenges to managerial learning, for which usually management educational programs have not prepared managers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore such challenges and possible ways to overcome them.

This is a conceptual paper that explores in depth the issue of managerial learning challenges in a complex world. Managers face these challenges during their practice, yet sometimes management education has not prepared them for this.

Three managerial learning challenges due to complexity are identified. First, through cognition and cognitive structures, managers simplify the world around them. Nevertheless, biases, inertia and inaccuracy emerge, as managers’ mental models are not truly capable of capturing complexity. Second, managers look for information to aid them in their learning processes, but the information they gather is sometimes bogus, invalid or unfounded. Third, managers could seek for support from management research to improve their learning. However, given management research intricacies, limitations and particularities, a learning challenge emerges as well, as management research has been rarely capable to capture complexity.

Having explored these managerial learning challenges due to complexity, this paper discusses a carefulness-based management learning ideal, which by being underpinned by the quality of carefulness and the related concepts of critical thinking, negative capability and a deep learning style, suggests a potential new way to approach management learning in light of complexity.

The International English Language Teaching System (IELTS) examination in Academic English includes two writing tasks: summarizing information from a graph or chart, and writing a short essay to support a position on an issue of opinion. The aim of this small-scale exploratory survey was to find out from teachers and students their attitudes towards the usefulness of, and preparation for, the two IELTS writing tasks. ‘Usefulness’ and ‘impact/washback’ are components of test validity, thus eliciting responses (via questionnaires) from 2 major stakeholders (teachers n=17, students n=36) in this high-stakes benchmark exam would provide information about perceptions of validity. The results indicate that both IELTS task one and task two are perceived by teachers and students as having a positive effect on class-based writing skills and bearing a reasonable relationship with skills needed at faculty level. Lack of usefulness was reported mainly by students in the Sharia and Law and Business faculties.