Edgar Schein has defined organizational culture as "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." (Schein, 1992, p.12) It would be interesting to explore the overlap between organizational culture and superstitious learning if the latter takes place when causal linkages between actions and outcomes are poorly inferred or because performance outcomes are difficult to assess in objective ways; if the overlap is large, superstitious learning may well be both a behavior and a strategy in the workplace.

According to me, superstitious learning should be disentangled into its cognitive component and its behavioral consequences. Superstitious learning, per se, captures a cognitive dynamic where the connection between causes and outcomes is misspecified. The "confidence trap" mentioned in Zollo's article is one of its potential (mostly disruptive) consequences. This cognitive aspect is not necessarily voluntary and may simply be the result of judgment heuristics. It's true that we try to observe learning through its behavioral (observable) results; however, if accepting that learning and learning outcomes are two different things, just like cognition and behavior are, then understanding the cognitive dynamics behind superstitious may potentially provide more insights into your behavior vs. strategy approach.

Additionally it might be of interest to find out if personality predicts overconfidence or superstitious learning. Some candidates come to my mind in case of special cognitive biases: impulsivity and narcissism since the latter ( as we and others found out) tend to massivevely overestimate they level of cognitive ability as well ( in our case studs. in their 20ies!) as their leadership self-efficacy (a good indicator for subjective competency ratings). Merry X-Mas!