A growing literature shows that deliberate, cognitive effort is necessary for learning to occur in the context of complex strategic activities. However, given increasing pressure for short-term results, it remains unclear what motivates management to actually invest such effort in learning, which benefits performance primarily in the longer term. To help fill this gap in our understanding of the motivational mechanisms behind organizational learning, we theorize whether and how corporate governance mechanisms push management toward more effective learning from its firm’s acquisition experience. Using data on U.S. firms’ acquisitions from 1996 through 2012, we find considerable support for our arguments.

越来越多的文献表明，要在复杂的战略活动背景下进行学习，需要有意识的认知努力。然而，鉴于对短期结果的压力越来越大，目前尚不清楚是什么促使管理层真正将这种努力投入到学习中，这主要有利于长期绩效。为了帮助填补我们对组织学习背后的动机机制理解的这一空白，我们对公司治理机制是否以及如何推动管理层从其公司的收购经验中更有效地学习进行了理论分析。使用 1996 年至 2012 年美国公司收购的数据，我们发现我们的论点得到了相当大的支持。