Logistics Education and Behavioral Training Decisions, Time Distortion, and the Prae Ante View

Abstract

In training and education for logistics, time inconsistency affects individual decisions regarding education and career choices. This is especially relevant in view of growing boundarylessness of careers that impacts the logistics sector with its high ratio of lateral entrants. We enrich the analysis of training and education decision-making processes with a third view beyond the common ex ante and ex post perspectives that has not been employed yet in this context. Our insights, modeled as a new prae ante view, can help prevent myopia in educational choice on an individual level and the resulting economic inefficiencies. This translates into more fitting provisions by individuals earlier, and into improved targeting of prospective employees in logistics. The purpose of this study is to provide an agent-based description grounded in behavioral economics, supported by an explorative empirical survey using extensive semi-structured expert-interviews with six participants concerning four to six career transitions each, conducted with employees in logistics professions. Main conclusions include that participants who were asked openly about influential factors for education and career decisions were oblivious of some factors described as highly predictive of educational and career success in literature, not acknowledging social and cultural capital, habitus, and chance, but also consistently ascribing success to a "milestone-mindset" to be described here as well.Logistics 2018, 2, 24 2 of 16 specific logistics education and training is beyond dispute [5][6][7], the issue of time-inconsistent choices in that regard has rarely been addressed, which appears especially striking given the high occurrence of track changes leading employees into logistics as lateral entrants [8][9][10]. Time inconsistency is a well-established topic in behavioral economics [11][12][13][14], while basic or continuing education and training are discussed in research in many contexts including our instance regarding the context of time-inconsistent educational choice in logistics.In our approach, all levels of education and training in logistics (vocational, academic, and continuing) are involved [15,16]. In this contribution, three perspectives are discerned, two of which are commonplace in economic theory. Usually, economic theory describes a decision perspective from an ex ante and ex post view. We deem this an unjustified limitation and propose an extended framework including a new "prae ante" view, for which this paper provides qualitative insights into the influential factors for this additional analytical perspective. Educational and career choices can be seen as investments in one's own human capital and are often analyzed both strategically (ex ante) and evaluated (ex post). In the economic analysis of intertemporal investment decisions, ex ante concerns the decision given the preferences, expectations, and information on the future [17,18]; meanwhile, ex post concerns an evaluation of decision outcomes in hindsight, for instance, by a...