Behind the learning curve: a sketch of the learning process
Management Science
Survival-Enhancing Learning in the Manhattan Hotel Industry, 1898-1980
Management Science
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
Behind the Learning Curve: Linking Learning Activities to Waste Reduction
Management Science
The Influence of Psychological Safety and Confidence in Knowledge on Employee Knowledge Sharing
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Market Heterogeneity and Local Capacity Decisions in Services
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
The Effects of Focus on Performance: Evidence from California Hospitals
Management Science
The Impact of Airline Flight Schedules on Flight Delays
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Single machine scheduling with autonomous learning and induced learning
Computers and Industrial Engineering
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In the extensive literature on learning curves, scholars have ignored outcome measures of organizational performance evaluated by customers. We explore whether customer dissatisfaction follows a learning-curve pattern. Do organizations learn to reduce customer dissatisfaction? Customer dissatisfaction occurs when customers ex ante expectations about a product or service exceed ex post perceptions about the product or service. Because customers can increase expectations over time, customer dissatisfaction may not decline even when the product or service improves. Consequently, it is an open question whether customer dissatisfaction follows a learning-curve pattern. Drawing from the literatures on learning curves and organizational learning, we hypothesize that customer dissatisfaction follows a U-shaped function of operating experience (Hypothesis 1), that focused airlines learn faster to reduce customer dissatisfaction than full-service airlines (Hypothesis 2), and that organizational learning curves for customer dissatisfaction are heterogeneous across airlines (Hypothesis 3). We test these hypotheses with quarterly data covering 1987 to 1998 on consumer complaints against the 10 largest U.S. airlines. We find strong support for Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 3. Hypothesis 2 is not supported in the sense that the average focused airline did not learn faster than the average full-service airline. However, we do find that the best focused airline learns faster than the best full-service airline. We explore this result by extending a knowledge-based view of managing productivity learning curves in factories to complaint learning curves in airlines.