The Experiential Learning Process of Japanese It Professionals

The primary objective of this study is to examine the experiential learning process of Japanese IT professionals, in order to investigate the nature of knowing. In this study we examined how IT professionals acquire job-related skills or expertise through experience. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 high-performing senior managers in consulting divisions and 14 managers in project management divisions. The results suggest that the experiential learning process was different between consultants and project managers. Project managers had step-by-step experience in terms of task difficulty, while consultants had zero-based experience at middle stage. These results suggest that the appropriate experiential learning process depends on the task characteristics and the career stage. The results were discussed from the viewpoint of research on knowing (Cook and Brown, 1999; Orlikowski, 2002), experiential learning (Dixon, 1999; Kolb, 1984), and acquisition of expertise (Ericsson, 1996).