Vicarious Learning from the Failures and Near-Failures of Others: Evidence from the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry

Abstract

We examine whether organizations vicariously learn from near-failures and failures of others. We propose that the impact of such failure-related experience depends on the geographic market and industry origin of the experience. Our findings indicate that the local failure-related experience of both banks and thrifts have higher survival-enhancing learning value for banks than nonlocal experience, supporting the value of accessibility and applicability for useful learning. Bank near-failure experience had more value than bank failure experience, but thrift failure and near-failure experience had equivalent impact, suggesting that the learning impact of types of failure-related experience varies with its industry origin.