Learning from Rare Failures: Opportunity and Motivation

In the organizational learning literature, organizations are typically expected to learn from experience, especially failures. Failures provide valuable learning opportunities, if those opportunities can be exploited (Dahlin, Chuang and Roulet, 2018). However, learning from failure may be contingent on having both motivation and opportunity to learn. The current study addresses 1) whether organizations generally learn from rare failures, and 2) the role of opportunity and motivation in learning from rare failures. We examine the relationship between cumulative past and current rare failures using a large sample of secondary longitudinal worker accident data for organizations situated in Oregon, U.S.A. We find that overall organizations do not learn from rare failures, but that this depends on both organizational motivation and opportunity to learn.