social learning theory
to act “connections” and instrumental trial
Richard J. Varey
LEARNING
This term is ubiquitous in the literature on
management wherever it is necessary to under-
stand why and how behavior changes or such
change is desirable. The term learning means
the process by which non-temporary acquisition
of an activity originates or is changed through a
person’s reaction to their encountered situation.
Thus, not all learning is improvement with prac-
tice or profiting from experience, nor change
with repetition, although these are common
views in the socially accepted meaning that
conflates learning with development or growth.
In the field of marketing, consumer buying
behavior is commonly understood as a process
that includes learning in the sense of change
in thinking caused by an earlier experience in
a stimulus–response process of drive, cues,
and response with reinforcement. Promotional
communication is understood largely in this
view as a behavior-shaping activity. In orga-
nizational behavior and leadership, including
personnel training and development, on the
other hand, we find the learning individual as
well as the learning organization.
Cognitivism is criticized as mentalistic and
behaviorism as deterministic, whereas the social
learning approach to understanding, predicting,
and controlling human behavior integrates their
contributions.
INDIVIDUAL LEARNING
To function as a member of society requires
learning, and learning occurs under social and
cultural conditions. Learning can sensibly be
explained as a change in a person’s under-
standing of the(ir) world and their relationship
to it. But how does this happen and how is social
behavior explained?
While the work of Albert Bandura (1977)
is today commonly cited for a theory of social
learning, the general problem of how developing
children acquire new response patterns – that
is, learn – has a history back to stimulus–
response theory and its challenges (Pavlov’s
stimulus–response associations and conditioned
Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, edited by Professor Sir Cary L Cooper.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
reflex, Thorndike’s sensory impression-impulse
and error learning, the behaviorism of Watson
and Guthrie, and the “grand theories” of Hull,
of Tolman’s cognitivism, and of Skinner’s
operant conditioning). The early social learning
theorists worked from a framework of general
learning theory, extending principles derived
from work on the individual to the behavior of
the individual in society.
Bandura’s contribution beginning in the early
1960s has been to highlight the ubiquity and
efficiency of observational learning compared
to shaping through differential reinforcement
and instrumental conditioning. A large part
of learning is observational, in a sense, imita-
tive. Our intelligence is linked strongly to an
ability to mimic what we observe with great
fidelity. Bandura argued that behavior can best
be understood in terms of continuous reciprocal
interaction of determining cognitive, behav-
ioral, and environmental factors. Social learning
theory draws on and extends classical and
operant conditioning principles to recognize that
learning can arise in vicarious modeling and self-
control processes, and not directly via antecedent
stimuli and contingent consequences.
Our actions largely produce the conditions
that affect our behavior. Behavior generates
experiences that partly determine the person
and their abilities and acuities, and these affect
behavior. For example, we may learn responses
that we only perform when there is an incentive
to do so. In other words, reward and punishment
affects performance but not learning. Most of
our behaviors are learned deliberately or inad-
vertently through the influence of example of
others’ behaviors.
For Bandura, learning – as socializing – is in
two steps: we observe the actions of others in
close contact and acquire a mental (conceptual)
picture of the act and consequences, then we
imitatively act out the image and respond to
the consequences, repeating if rewarded or not
if punished. He understood such modeling as
subprocesses of attention, retention (memory)
and reproduction, and motivation through rein-
forcement (positive or negative). Drawing on
the earlier work by Rotter and Miller & Dollard,
via Hull, who were concerned to extend general
learning theory to understand the behavior of the
2 social learning theory
individual in society, Bandura proposed a unified
theoretical framework for analyzing thought and
behavior. He understood that behavioral learning
is influenced, even controlled, by environmental
(social surroundings) factors, and cognitive
learning by psychological factors, and these are
both active and not separable. He went beyond
the inadequacies of earlier mechanistic models
of human behavior acquisition and regulation, to
recognize the significance of vicarious, symbolic,
and self-regulatory psychological processes,
and the influence of observation and direct
experience.
Thus, in Social Learning Theory, human
development arises in experiential learning
processes of change. Such change may be
planned (Goldstein, 1984). Social learning
theorists focus on the continuous process of
shaping of individual behaviors by stimuli in
their environment, affected by their own cogni-
tive development and functioning. At the heart
of this understanding of learned behavior is
the notion of response consequences. While
Bandura is recognized as the key figure of
modern thinking on social learning, he is often
considered a champion for educational practices
that emphasize individual accomplishment and
is less acknowledged for his focus on collective
interests and long-term welfare. He recognized
that change is best effected by providing advan-
tageous options. Personal and social changes
come about in the making of value choices, and
the assessment of the consequences of alternative
arrangements is central to this. Social learning
theory has a role in social policy making.
COLLECTIVE LEARNING
Over the past 20 years, there has been a shift
from focusing on individual learning toward
organizational learning. This is a shift from
privileging ideas, facts, and concepts in indi-
vidual minds, to recognizing learning in social
units. However, it is important to move beyond
concepts of organizational learning to address
advances in psychology and education (Reed
et al., 2010). Social learning is not merely the
aggregate of individual learning, in terms of
process or purpose, as can be seen in many
examples of citizenship education.
Social (or collaborative) learning is a more
inclusive, inherently participatory, and purpose-
ful explanation of learning and refers to
processes among a group of people who seek
to improve a common situation and take action
collectively. Unlike individual learning, a human
brain is not the main site of social learning
(Milbrath, 1989). This understanding extends
experiential learning to collective learning. This
is a form of governance, in that governance is
how society manages to allocate resources and
coordinate or control activity. It is in essence
adaptive management or “learning-by-doing” to
enhance capacity to adapt (see, e.g., the exten-
sive resources of the learning for sustainability
network).
Such colearning as a process of social change
has become a normative goal in natural resource
policy and management. Reed et al. (2010)
argue that social learning arises through social
interaction in a social network, resulting when
there is a change in understanding that is beyond
the individual and is situated in social units or
communities of practice. It is the social unit that
learns rather than individuals learning indepen-
dently, and the learning spreads beyond the units
to the wider social networks where individuals
are active. Studies show that collective learning
performs better than aggregated individual
learning (Surowiecki, 2004) in dealing with
social and societal problems.
It is important to distinguish facilitators and
conducive conditions (such as active participa-
tion in decision making), from the phenomenon
of social learning, and the outcomes that arise
may stem from it. Thus, social learning may
be understood as a means to an end (changed
conditions, problem solution, etc.) and as an
outcome of a social process. Social learning
does not necessarily emerge from participation,
and indeed social learning can arise from the
absence of any planned participatory process,
for example, in mass and “social” media. Thus,
social learning is neither simply intentional
collective self-reflection in dialogue nor is it
learning how to collaborate. Desirable outcomes
may be arrived at by other means, and social
learning may occur without associated outcomes
(Reed et al., 2010).
The kind of interaction influences the kind
of learning, as does the congruence of differing

epistemological beliefs and commitments
concerning what and how we know. Indeed,
social learning implies the necessity of bringing
people of different worldviews and systems of
knowledge together cooperatively, yet lots of
interaction may not in itself bring about social
learning for reasons of context, power, and
values.
Communication is at the core of processes
of interaction, essential in developing knowl-
edge and understanding. Kolb (1984) explains
learning as a deep reflection on concrete expe-
riences and deriving abstract concepts applied
in active experimentation. We socially construct
our knowledge, meanings, and identity rather
than learning arising in the “communication”
(i.e., dissemination of information) of knowledge
from person to person, informative and commu-
nicative interaction produces (constructs)
learning among people (Deetz, 1992; Dervin
et al., 1989; Dervin, Foreman-Wernet, and,
Launterbach, 2003; Leeds-Hurwitz, 1995).
Such communicative interaction changes values
and beliefs in social networks, and as well
as changing the content, it also brings about
changes in the network and institutional struc-
tures.
Social learning has come to the fore in
the growing eco-consciousness and acknowl-
edgement of the sustainability imperative for
positive social-ecological outcomes from human
action. This necessitates social evolution in
which humans participate and direct their own
learning. This notion of a learning society goes
beyond the learning organization, and is mani-
fest in the growth of social movements intent on
“learning our way to a new society” (Milbrath,
1989). The post-industrial societal environment
requires a capability for double loop learning
at the social and personal level (Trist, 1980).
Double loop learning (Argyris and Schon, 1978)
is experiential incremental learning (single loop
learning) in which the learner attains awareness
of the values and assumptions on which it is
based and is thus aware of and can shift their
frame of reference. In this process a shift in
dominant social paradigm is created, and social
learning has occurred when a dominant social
practice or institution replaces another – society
has adapted.
social learning theory 3
Following the ancient Greeks, a society that
can readily supply sufficient goods and services,
in other words, has made itself affluent, can
turn its attention to nourishing personal and
social learning. The paideia promotes lifelong
learning and self-development and is thus the
major project for society. This is facilitated
by the accumulation of knowledge, by the
driving force of technological challenge, and
by elaborate forms of communication. These
are the very resources of the early twenty first
century.
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