The way you learn is crucial................

Soon after my marriage in 1992, my wife & I were on board a ship with some pretty smart officers who played Table Tennis very well. TT is a sport that I love & I would head down to the TT room to play a few games every day. At first, my wife, would keep away as she did not play the sport. However, soon she was a spectator and after a few days, wanted to play. I was skeptical and tried to fob her off, as I was afraid of being embarrassed. My wife can be bull headed at times and play she did. The funny thing was that she was amazingly good & even more peculiar was that she had my style. The speed at which she had mastered the game puzzled me till I heard of vicarious learning.
Kirk uses very offensive language in talking back to Mr. Winters. Mr. Winters realizes that Kirk is just trying to get his attention, and so he calmly ignores Kirk and attempts to go on with the class. Soon, other students start using offensive language.

Vicarious Learning" (VL) is the notion that people can and will learn through being given access to the learning experiences of others.

There are four separate types of vicarious learning.
• Modeling Effect occurs when a person almost directly duplicates a behavior he has seen someone else perform and which the observer has not previously suppressed. The observer displays new behaviors that prior to the modeling had a zero probability of occurring. For example, my son bats the way he does because Rahul Dravid is successful with that batting stance.
• The Eliciting Effect occurs when the observer performs a behavior to the model's, but still somewhat different. For example, if I hear that a famous celebrity has donated Rs 50,000 to charity, I would be demonstrating the Eliciting Effect if this generosity prompted me to volunteer to umpire in the local cricket games.
• The Disinhibitory Effect occurs when a person who has previously refrained from a behavior goes ahead and performs that behavior after seeing a model perform the behavior without receiving any negative consequences. For example, if I already knew how to speed in my automobile but refrained from doing so out of fear of a speeding ticket, I could demonstrate the Disinhibitory Effect by driving more quickly after several cars passed me on the expressway with no apparent negative consequences.
• The Inhibitory Effect occurs when a person refrains from a behavior after seeing a model punished for engaging in that behavior. For example, I once stopped asking questions in a high school class after I saw several students receive assignments to write reports on topics about which they asked questions.

Vicarious learning as an OB concept is crucial in organizations, because it can determine the culture that an organization has.

As a senior manager, if you allow subordinates to be harassed and bullied, you may be sure that others in the organization will learn and repeat the behavior, unless punitive measures are adopted and the dysfunctional behavior is stamped out.

Similarly if you allow incompetence and sloth you are encouraging people to learn the behavior and mimic it, which eventually will pull the plug on your boat and sink it.
Organization learning is crucial to organization culture and it is important what employees learn and from whom……………………………..it is more important that managers understand learning concepts, well...............

I think it the reason why psychologists talk about the environment at home.