Failure and Learning Behavior: The Role of Supervisory Support

Even though some scholars and CEOs have praised the merits of failure in innovation, employees often experience failure as a threat and shrink away from learning new things. Relying upon discussions of threat rigidity and social support, this paper aimed to examine two research agendas. The first was to clarify the cognitive and affective mechanisms of threat rigidity after a failure experience, while the second was to explore how supervisory support would alleviate the negative rigidity process. Using multisource data composed of objective failure measures and self-reports from 419 engineers in a Korean manufacturing company, this study employed a structural equation modeling method with Mplus 7.4 to analyze a moderated mediation model. Analysis provided evidence that perception of self-efficacy mediated the path from failure to learning behaviors, while the negative affect path was not significant. Moreover, supervisory support was found to attenuate the path from failure to learning behaviors via self-efficacy. However, a moderating effect was not found in the case of negative affect. The present research enriched the threat rigidity view by incorporating views on social learning and social support. It also expanded the realm of social support studies by incorporating failure and learning for employees. In addition, the present research contributed to knowledge on failure by utilizing an individual’s objective measures. Practical implications include the importance of supervisors in managing employees who have undergone failure.