Organizational Learning: Perspectives and Practices

The source of the oppositions perceived between working, learning, and innovating lies primarily in the gulf between precepts and practices. Formal descriptions of work (e.g., "office procedures") and of learning (e.g., "subject matter") are abstracted from actual practices. They omit the details both inevitably and intentionally. In a society that attaches a particular value to "abstract knowledge," the details of practice have come to be seen as non-essential and easily developed, once the relevant abstractions are grasped. Thus, education, training, and technology design generally focus on abstract representations to the detriment, if not exclusion, of actual practice. We suggest, by contrast, that practice is central to the understanding of work. Abstractions detached from practices distort or obscure the intricacies of that practice. Without a clear understanding of those intricacies and the role they play, the practice itself cannot be well-understood, engendered (through training), or enhanced (through innovation).