IKEA is a Sweden-based home furnishings chain with stores in Canada and the United States. A single store can have 40 managers, making the task of training enough new managers quickly and well a challenge. To get managers trained for new store openings, IKEA has established certain stores as centers of excellence.These centers of excellence become learning sites for one or more management competencies that managers must master. Manager trainees have a carefully developed, objectives- based curriculum and access to a 17-module online learning program that covers the basics of each of nine management competencies. Once a trainee has mastered the learning material as well as a series of practicum assignments, he or she is eligible to be certified as successful by the competence center store manager.Trainees can be at a competence center for two to six weeks depending on the competency to be mastered and number of competencies to be mastered at each center. Part of the process involves shadowing successful managers. This is followed by two weeks of classroom training at IKEA Business College where managers are introduced to the philosophies and theories behind IKEA store operations. They get exposed to the "big picture," the theory of how the company operates, and what the IKEA vision is all about. Six months after a location opens, managers begin rotating back to Business College for advanced store operations training.
(a) To what extent does the manager training program follow the learning process and stages of learning according to Cognitive and Behavioural Learning Theories?
(b) To what extent does the program incorporate the elements of Social Learning Theory and Gagne Brigg's Nine Events of Instruction?
(c) What changes if any would you make to the program?