The ambiguity of errors for work and learning: Introduction to the volume

Abstract

“By mistakes we learn” is a commonly used truism. However, from the perspective of research, the questions on how and under what conditions we learn from mistakes are hard to answer. One reason for this is that there is a huge variety of errors (e.g., lapses of memory versus using a wrong cognitive strategy for solving a problem; Norman, 1981; Rasmussen, 1987a; Reason, 1990). In addition, errors occur in various contexts (e.g., school, work, sports, everyday life), which may involve multiple causes and may lead to different learning potentials. Therefore, investigating under what conditions individuals, teams, or organisations can learn from errors is a demanding issue for research, which poses theoretical and methodological challenges (Billett, 2012; Mehl, 2010; Mehl & Wehner, 2012).