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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between self‐directed learning readiness (SDLR) of business students in Germany and the USA and their attitudes towards information sharing and to ascertain implications for workplace learning.

This empirical study used a survey research design.

The study finds that surveyed US business students have higher SDLR scores than their German counterparts, implying that they are more self‐directed when it comes to learning. In both countries, the higher the SDLR score of a person, the more likely this person is willing to share information. The motivation behind it is primarily to help others. This means that employees with high SDLR scores can support and foster workplace learning as they distribute information more freely.

The findings are significant because the relation between SDLR and information sharing, as well as the implications for workplace learning, have not been analyzed in previous studies. Additionally, the international focus of the research adds a cross‐cultural perspective to the debate in self‐directed learning.

It tends to be called the corner shop, mainly because it occupied a corner building for extra window space, but also due to the impetus given to the name by television series seeking to portray life as it used to be. The village grew from the land, a permanent stopping place for the wandering tribes of early Britain, the Saxons, Welsh, Angles; it furnished the needs of those forming it and eventually a village store or shop was one of those needs. Where the needs have remained unchanged, the village is much as it has always been, a historical portrait. The town grew out of the village, sometimes a conglomerate of several adjacent villages. In the days before cheap transport, the corner shop, in euphoric business terms, would be described as “a little gold mine”, able to hold its own against the first introduction of multiple chain stores, but after 1914 everything changed. Edwardian England was blasted out of existence by the holocaust of 1914–18, destroyed beyond all hope of recovery. The patterns of retail trading changed and have been continuously changing ever since. A highly developed system of cheap bus transport took village housewives and also those in the outlying parts of town into busy central shopping streets. The jaunt of the week for the village wife who saw little during the working days; the corner shop remained mainly for things they had “run out of”. Every village had its “uppety” madames however who affected disdain of the corner shop and its proprietors, preferring to swish their skirts in more fashionable emporia, basking in the obsequious reception by the proprietor and his equally servile staff.

The purpose of this study is to apply the motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA) framework to investigate the relationships between ambiguity tolerance (AT), reflective thinking (RT) and performance in a complex task to predict knowledge-sharing intent.

In this study, 190 subjects performed a complex scheduling task in which they were randomly assigned to either participate in RT or not.

Results show that factors of the MOA framework positively predicted knowledge-sharing intent. In addition, RT significantly increased intention to share for individuals with low performance or with low AT.

More research is needed to determine relationships between complex task performance and knowledge sharing, and the role of learning strategies, particularly self-directed ones such as RT. Future studies may use a larger sample size for more complex analysis.

RT may be used to create a sustainable and low-cost method of increasing knowledge sharing in complex tasks, without which those with low AT or low performance may not have participated.

The study supports the importance of contextual influences and points to how organizations can use RT in addition to individual motivation and ability to encourage knowledge sharing.