Dahl, Jonas

Jonas Dahl is a PhD Candidate in Business Administration at the Department of Management and Organization. His work focuses on emotional dimensions of failure sharing and learning from failures in organizations. In addition to being a researcher, he works as an consultant helping organizations to transform. 

Latest publication: Dahl & Werr (2021). Sharing Errors Where Everyone Is Perfect—Culture, Emotional Dynamics, and Error Sharing in Two Consulting Firms. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amd.2019.0188

Research on emotional dimensions of failure sharing
In the organizational context, people commit errors on a daily basis and fail in different ways, which creates consequences for themselves, the organization, its stakeholders, and in some cases for society at large. Errors and failures are constantly present not only in various aspects of organizational life, but also in the economy, the environment, and in public society.

However, the research on these phenomena is relatively young. In the early 1990s it first began to seriously take the time and energy from different researchers around how people and companies could prevent, manage and learn from errors and failures (e.g., Sitkin, 1992). Despite the negative consequences that errors and failures cause, previous research indicates its valuable and important function in organizations. Among other things, errors and failures create the conditions for learning, improvement and efficiency. Although, this has been known for a long time, for most organizations it has proved difficult to achieve in practice (Argyris, 1993; Edmondson, 1996, 1999; Reason, 1990; Sitkin, 1992). Previous research also shows that people in organizations usually try to hide their failures or even blame others (Edmondson, 1996; Tax & Brown, 1998 ; Tucker & Edmondson, 2003; Uribe, Schweikhart, Pathak, & Marsh, 2002), creating barriers to learning, development, and efficiency.

Thus, his research purpose is to better understand how failure experiences in organizations are shared and shaped between professionals in complex service contexts (e.g., consulting firms) that are characterized by unpredictable, ambiguous, everyday, social situations, and service development driven by intimate customer interactions.

In this context Jonas is especially focusing on the emotional dynamics underlying individual´s situation assessment of failure sharing. Typical emotional reactions from failure experiences investigated are guilt and shame.

Current research questions

• How do people consider sharing experiences of failure and how are these considerations, cognitively and emotionally, influenced by the interaction between contextual and personal factors?
• How are failures shaped, i.e. how do people do when they share failure experiences in a social working context?

failure sharing, error sharing, learning from failure, self-conscious emotions (guilt, shame), self-compassion.

Looking for future collaborations
Now looking for organizations to conduct the next research study.

Please, feel free to contact Jonas if any interest or question may arise.
Mobile Phone: +46 (0)70761 6601
E-mail: jonas.dahl@phdstudent.hhs.se