Ebook: Human Fallibility: The Ambiguity of Errors for Work and Learning

A curious ambiguity surrounds errors in professional working contexts: they must be avoided in case they lead to adverse (and potentially disastrous) results, yet they also hold the key to improving our knowledge and procedures. In a further irony, it seems that a prerequisite for circumventing errors is our remaining open to their potential occurrence and learning from them when they do happen. This volume, the first to integrate interdisciplinary perspectives on learning from errors at work, presents theoretical concepts and empirical evidence in an attempt to establish under what conditions professionals deal with errors at work productively—in other words, learn the lessons they contain. By drawing upon and combining cognitive and action-oriented approaches to human error with theories of adult, professional, and workplace learning this book provides valuable insights which can be applied by workers and professionals. It includes systematic theoretical frameworks for explaining learning from errors in daily working life, methodologies and research instruments that facilitate the measurement of that learning, and empirical studies that investigate relevant determinants of learning from errors in different professions. Written by an international group of distinguished researchers from various disciplines, the chapters paint a comprehensive picture of the current state of the art in research on human fallibility and (learning from) errors at work.

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A curious ambiguity surrounds errors in professional working contexts: they must be avoided in case they lead to adverse (and potentially disastrous) results, yet they also hold the key to improving our knowledge and procedures. In a further irony, it seems that a prerequisite for circumventing errors is our remaining open to their potential occurrence and learning from them when they do happen. This volume, the first to integrate interdisciplinary perspectives on learning from errors at work, presents theoretical concepts and empirical evidence in an attempt to establish under what conditions professionals deal with errors at work productively—in other words, learn the lessons they contain. By drawing upon and combining cognitive and action-oriented approaches to human error with theories of adult, professional, and workplace learning this book provides valuable insights which can be applied by workers and professionals. It includes systematic theoretical frameworks for explaining learning from errors in daily working life, methodologies and research instruments that facilitate the measurement of that learning, and empirical studies that investigate relevant determinants of learning from errors in different professions. Written by an international group of distinguished researchers from various disciplines, the chapters paint a comprehensive picture of the current state of the art in research on human fallibility and (learning from) errors at work.

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A curious ambiguity surrounds errors in professional working contexts: they must be avoided in case they lead to adverse (and potentially disastrous) results, yet they also hold the key to improving our knowledge and procedures. In a further irony, it seems that a prerequisite for circumventing errors is our remaining open to their potential occurrence and learning from them when they do happen. This volume, the first to integrate interdisciplinary perspectives on learning from errors at work, presents theoretical concepts and empirical evidence in an attempt to establish under what conditions professionals deal with errors at work productively—in other words, learn the lessons they contain. By drawing upon and combining cognitive and action-oriented approaches to human error with theories of adult, professional, and workplace learning this book provides valuable insights which can be applied by workers and professionals. It includes systematic theoretical frameworks for explaining learning from errors in daily working life, methodologies and research instruments that facilitate the measurement of that learning, and empirical studies that investigate relevant determinants of learning from errors in different professions. Written by an international group of distinguished researchers from various disciplines, the chapters paint a comprehensive picture of the current state of the art in research on human fallibility and (learning from) errors at work.

Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xiii
Front Matter....Pages 15-15
Errors and Learning from Errors at Work....Pages 17-32
Tracing Outcomes of Learning from Errors on the Level of Knowledge....Pages 33-51
Towards a Theory of Negative Knowledge (NK): Almost-Mistakes as Drivers of Episodic Memory Amplification....Pages 53-70
Professional Knowledge Is (Also) Knowledge About Errors....Pages 71-87
Front Matter....Pages 89-89
Research on Errors and Learning from Them: Methodological Perspectives....Pages 91-106
Measuring Organizational Climate for Learning from Errors at Work....Pages 107-123
Front Matter....Pages 125-125
Innovation by Learning from Mistakes: The Relationships Between Team Characteristics, Error Orientation and Team Innovation....Pages 127-140
Error Orientation in the Context of Intuitive and Competent Behaviour: Results of an Exploratory Study in the Domain of Emergency Medicine....Pages 141-153
Human Fallibility and Learning from Errors at Work....Pages 155-169
Front Matter....Pages 171-171
Managing Errors During Training....Pages 173-195
Reflecting on Learning from Errors in School Instruction: Findings and Suggestions from a Swiss-German Video Study....Pages 197-213
Learning from Errors: The Role of After-Event Reviews....Pages 215-232
Incident Reporting Systems in Hospitals: How Does Learning Occur Using this Organisational Instrument?....Pages 233-252
Front Matter....Pages 253-253
Research on Human Fallibility and Learning from Errors at Work: Challenges for Theory, Research, and Practice....Pages 255-265
The Ambiguity of Errors for Work and Learning: Introduction to the Volume....Pages 1-14
Back Matter....Pages 267-279