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Offerings of electronic courses and degrees are growing at a surprising rate. Some have surmised that E courses represent the future for higher education and that the traditional university may soon be a relic of the past: do E courses represent a significant improvement over traditional pedagogy for educating students? In this context, 305 questionnaires were sent by e‐mail to accounting chairpersons in the USA. A total of 94 usable responses was received. Nearly 65 per cent of the respondents indicated that E courses are simply correspondence courses presented with new technology. Those who view E courses as correspondence courses are more negative on offering E courses in university programs or offering degrees through the completion of only E courses. They are also more restrictive with E courses, favoring the proctoring of exams and requiring students to come to campus as part of the E course. Additionally, they tended to agree that “the student‐to‐student and the student‐to‐instructor interaction that are missing in E courses makes them less valuable to the student.” Instead of viewing E courses and E degrees as the “university of the future”, they see them as adjuncts to university programs just as correspondence courses have been for decades.

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 plethora of contributions to social learning has resulted in a wide range of interpretations, meanings and applications of social learning, both within and across disciplines. However, advancing the concept and using social learning methods and tools in areas like disaster-shocks requires interdisciplinary consolidation of understandings. In this context, the primary focus of this paper is on the contributions of social learning to disaster risk reduction (DRR).

By applying a three-round policy Delphi process involving 18 purposefully selected scholars and expert-practitioners, the authors collected data on the meanings of social learning for two groups of professionals, DRR and social-ecological resilience. The survey instruments included questions relating to the identification of the core elements of social learning and the prospects for enhancing social-ecological resilience.

The results revealed strong agreement that (1) the core elements of social learning indicate a collective, iterative and collaborative process that involves sharing/networking, changes in attitudes and knowledge and inclusivity; (2) social learning from disasters is unique; and (3) linkages between disciplines can be built by promoting interdisciplinarity, networks and knowledge platforms; collaboration and coordination at all levels; and teaching and practicing trust and respect. Social learning is useful in preparing for and responding to specific disaster events through communication; sharing experience, ideas and resources; creating synergies for collective action and promoting resilience.

The policy Delphi process involved a limited number of participants to control the quality of the data. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to identify the core elements of social learning, specifically, in the disaster-shock context. It also makes significant contributions to the interdisciplinary integration issues.

The practical implications of this study are related to pre-disaster planning and mitigation through the application of social learning on disaster-shocks.

The social implications of this study are related to valuing social learning for the improvement of disaster planning, management, and policy formulation and implementation in reducing disaster risks.

The study provides a consensus view on the core elements of social learning and its role in DRR and resilience building. Relevant to all stages of DRR, social learning is best characterized as a collective, iterative and collaborative process. It can be promoted by enhancing networking and interdisciplinarity.