A Narrative Perspective on Organizational Learning from Unusual Experiences

We explain how organizational experiences that fall outside already known experience categories pose a challenge to traditional notions of learning. We suggest that one way to learn about and from such unusual experiences is through the use of narratives. Not only do narratives help individuals make sense of unusual experiences, but, at the same time, they facilitate a process whereby others can learn from them too. We explore how the use of narratives to learn from unusual experiences can be a generative process, i.e., every instance of learning from an unusual experience can potentially inform how other unusual experiences can be addressed. We illustrate how this learning process unfolds and then consider the differences between a narrative approach and the traditional logico-scientific approach to learning.