A research team from the University of Navarra’s School of Economics and Business Administration and IESE Business School recently published an article in the Academy of Management Journal. The journal is considered to be the second most important in the world in the field of business (out of 115 journals) and the third most important in the field of management (out of 185) in terms of impact factor, according to Journal Citation Reports. AMJ is therefore regularly classified as “excellent” on lists of business publications.

Carmen Aranda and Javier Arellano, from the School of Economics and Business Administration, and Antonio Dávila, from IESE Business School, penned the article “Organizational Learning in Target Setting.” Of the 3,300 articles indexed in the journal by April 2016, only 13 featured contributions from Spanish authors, and only one was written entirely by Spaniards. This is the second.

“The article is the result of a research project that provided a general analysis of the phenomenon of organizational learning with a focus on the target-setting process,” explained Javier Arellano, Associate Dean of Students at the University of Navarra’s School of Economics and Business Administration. The research takes a look at how companies draw on several information sources to set quantitative targets for their business units. The study is particularly relevant for businesses that are expanding. “Specifically, the paper describes how companies first focus on information on the current performance of other business units (vicarious learning) in the early years and gradually shift their focus toward information on the past performance of other business units (experiential learning) as the business units mature,” explained Arellano.

What’s more, the lessons learned from positive and negative performance (successes and failures) are also different, depending on the organization’s stage of development. “The results of our research show that, in the early stages in new business units, interaction between different ways of learning is especially important when setting targets. That’s why the results of this study are so important for businesses that are going through periods of expansion,” said Carmen Aranda.