ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses and expands understanding of agency in vicarious learning at work. It aims to focus understanding of vicarious learning by reviewing whether and how prior research has been sensitive to individual agency, revealing a spectrum of approaches that afford a greater or lesser role in individual's deliberate actions and learning efforts in vicarious learning. The chapter provides a representation of how agency has been implicitly included (or excluded) in prior studies in order to sharpen understanding of its role in the vicarious learning process. It also aims to expand this understanding by articulating the assumptions and implications of both lower- and higher-agency approaches to vicarious learning. Building on this understanding, the chapter concludes with a call for future work that not only explicates its view of agency in vicarious learning, but that focuses in particular on the high-agency end of the spectrum, and advance several promising avenues for research on agentic vicarious learning at work.
