Title: An exploratory study of informal learning and team performance in the pre-consulting phase

Authors: Roza Marsaulina Sibarani

Addresses: Business School, Universitas Pelita Harapan, Lippo Karawaci, Tangerang, 15811, Indonesia

Abstract: This paper reports the process of informal learning in the pre-consulting phase in management-consulting firms in Indonesia. As the consulting industry significantly grows in Indonesia, more organisations use consultant services to improve their business. Pre-consulting is an important phase to define the right solutions, which involves a lot of informal learning activities. More, team diversity and client's uncertainty also influence this phase and lead to team conflict and impact to team performance. After developing a conceptual exploration based on several key constructs and their interrelationship, this paper uses empirical examples of actual consulting firms to study. A qualitative study of observation and semi in-depth interviews to six informants representing four medium size-consulting firms in Jakarta were done. This paper suggests that a team can create innovative solutions to the prospective clients and get the project if they can learn informally and manage the conflict caused by team diversity and client' uncertainty.

Keywords: informal learning; team performance; team conflict; team diversity; client's uncertainty; consulting project.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLC.2017.087448

International Journal of Learning and Change, 2017 Vol.9 No.4, pp.306 - 318

Received: 09 Dec 2016
Accepted: 03 May 2017
Published online: 15 Oct 2017 *

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