MIL practitioner guide: chapter 2

Chapter 2: Securing the conditions and resources for managerial intellectual learning

Managerial intellectual learning (MIL) is an engaging activity; inevitably, it also takes time as well as external support to do so. The following two types of conditions and resources are the major ones:

1. Related to mindset: To pursue managerial intellectual learning as an engaging and life-long activity, the learner has to be convinced that it is worthwhile to do so. Specifically, such learning should be conceived as important to a learner for pursuing his/her life-goal, including career goal, and cultivating his/her self-image. One aspect of this required mindset is intense intellectual curiosity. Moreover, it is highly desirable to have a low level of mental distraction and noises as they weaken a learner's ability to be mindful and critically reflective in managerial intellectual learning. To keep the level low of them and to effectively cope with them, emotional intelligence, social networking skills and a noble mindset are also much required. These psychological conditions are also highly relevant for a learner to respond to other external environmental matters, such as work-life balance and the attention paid to mental, physical and financial health.

2. Related to external environment: External environmental conditions such as the political, economic, social and technological trends do affect the quality of life, including work life of a person pursuing MIL. The mindset of a learner enables him/her to cope with these external factors that have an impact on learning, but there is a limit of what a learner's mindset can do in this regard. Beside these macro-environmental conditions, a learner's immediate external environment, such as his/her social network, infrastructural (e.g., e-learning infrastructure), and corporate support, e.g., human resource development policy, also influence a learner's ability to take up engaging and life-long MIL.

Factors on the two types of conditions/resources are inter-related, dynamic and, to a large extent, perceptual in nature. They interact and evolve over time in a somewhat stochastic mode. It is vital that the learner be sensitive to them and manage them as best as he/she is able to so as to create a favourable MIL environment as well as gaining the necessary resources and motivation to propel the learning.

Further readings

Ho, J.K.K. 2014. “On Plagiarism-Dissolving: a Research Note” European Academic Research 1(2) February: 4274-4290.

Ho, J.K.K. 2014. “A Research Note on the Managerial Intellectual Learning Capabilities-Building Mechanism (MILCBM)” European Academic Research 2(2) May: 2029-2047.

Ho, J.K.K. 2014. “An empirical study on managerial intellectual learning and managerial intellectual learning capabilities-Building Mechanism (MILCBM)” European Academic Research 2(8) November: 10564-10577.