The Power of Mistakes in the Context of Constant Learning Culture and Hierarchy

Learning culture matters; company culture must support continuous improvement. Organizational learning is defined as a process of identifying and modifying mistakes resulted from interactions between co-workers. The article aims to explore the learning power via errors, taking into account the organizational hierarchy conditions as a moderator. It is important to know how hierarchy (low and high) may influence and moderate the adaptability to change via the acceptance of mistakes. The study is based on 380 case samples gathered from November to December 2019 among Polish employees working in knowledge-driven organizations across various industries. The data were analyzed with PROCESS software. The authors discovered that employees working in low-hierarchy organizations adapt to changes more effectively than those who work in highly hierarchized companies. They also found out that the acceptance of mistakes does not affect the adaptability of low-hierarchy organizations (not significant). The opposite effect is observed for strong hierarchical organizations. When it comes to mistakes, their acceptance significantly improves adaptability to change. Therefore high-hierarchy organizations that accept mistakes achieve better results for adaptability to change than low- and medium-hierarchy organizations. However, the lower the hierarchy of an organization, the lower the significance of mistake acceptance for adaptability to change is. It may, therefore, be concluded that strong hierarchical organizations may adapt to changes only if they accept errors, and learning via the acceptance of mistakes enables them to adapt to changes better. However, it only works if the mistake acceptance level is high. When low – hierarchical organizations' adaptability to change is also very low. In low-hierarchy organizations, adaptability to change is generally high and is not related to the level of mistake acceptance. However, it is not as high as in hierarchical organizations that learn from their mistakes. The above suggests that managers' and supervisors' vital contribution to organizational adaptability to change and growth is to help employees learn from their mistakes. And if they are not willing to learn, the organization should be non-hierarchical if it wants to grow