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This study aims to determine whether elder care nurses engage in knowledge sharing and reflection within their teams and if these team-learning activities influence an elder care nursing team’s performance. Furthermore, the authors investigated the relation between elder care nurses' estimation of the team climate as being safe and team-learning activities.

For this research, a questionnaire survey of 30 elder care nursing teams (N = 30, n = 149) working in 17 different retirement homes was conducted.

Structural equation model showed significant positive relations between knowledge sharing and team performance, and between reflection and knowledge sharing. A safe team climate had a significantly positive influence on reflection.

Little is known about the performance of elder care nursing teams, how to measure team performance in this domain and how performance is influenced by learning activities. This study fills these gaps by providing an insight into the relationship between team-learning activities and team performance. Team performance was measured by the estimation of the team members and by using performance assessments from an independent institution.

The purpose of this replication study is to identify relevant individual and contextual factors influencing learning from errors at work and to determine if the predictors for learning activities are the same for the domains of nursing and retail banking.

A cross-sectional replication study was carried out in retail banking departments of a German bank. In a pre-study, interviews were conducted with experts (N = 4) of retail banking. The pre-study was necessary to develop vignettes describing authentic examples of error situations which were part of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was filled out by 178 employees.

Results indicate that the estimation of an error as relevant for learning positively predicts bankers’ engagement in social learning activities. The tendency to cover up an error predicts bankers’ engagement negatively. There are also indirect effects of error strain and the perception of a safe social team climate on the engagement in social learning.

This paper contributes to the generalization of results by transferring and testing a model of learning from errors in a domain different from the previous domains where this topic was investigated.

The study pursues two goals: first, as a replication study, the purpose of this paper is to test a model of learning from errors in the domain of insurance industry. Second, to increase insights in learning from errors, the authors focussed on different types of errors.

The authors conducted a cross-sectional survey in the insurance industry (N=206). The authors used structural equation modelling and path modelling to analyse the data. To be able to analyse different types of errors, the authors used Critical Incident Technique and asked participants to describe error situations.

Findings from the study are that the model of learning from errors could partly be replicated. The results indicate that a non-punitive orientation towards errors is an important factor to reduce the tendency of insurance agents to cover up errors when knowledge and rule-based errors happen. In situations of slips and lapses error strain has a negative influence on trust and non-punitive orientation which in turn both reduce the tendency to cover up errors.

Limitation is the small sample size. By using Critical Incidents Technique, the authors were able to analyse authentic error situations. Implications of the results concern the importance of error-friendly climate in organisations.

Replication studies are important to generalise results to different domains. To increase the insight in learning from errors, the authors analysed influencing factors with regard to different types of errors.