The Passion for Learning and Knowing

Abstraction’ as micro-learning-process is rarely used to analyze practices of organizational learning. In this paper, we portray abstraction as a basic learning process that prevails even in contexts characterized by high degrees of uncertainty and heterogeneity, that is, in high reliability organizations. We discuss several flavors of abstraction and use them as heuristic devices to analyze how organizational agents apply abstractions to cope with new and unexpected situations. For this purpose, we present an empirical case dealing with work experiences of novice nurse anesthetists. Based on this case, we argue that the way abstraction is built and applied has a major influence on whether novel situations can be handled ‘mindfully’

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