Learning Vicariously From Failure: The Case of Major League Soccer and the Collapse of the North American Soccer League

Abstract

Organizations are often encouraged to learn from the failures of others. However, failures can be extremely complicated and multifaceted, defying clear cause attribution. Learning organizations face challenges in adopting and implementing the lessons of such failures and many times are unable to appropriately correct the root causes. Using a grounded theory approach, the authors present a learning case by Major League Soccer (MLS) from its failed predecessor—the North American Soccer League (NASL), depicting patterns of learning in four aspects: control, foreign players, media relationships, and financial viability. The authors propose a two-stage process model of vicarious learning from failure based on two fundamental processes: cause attribution and lesson implementation.