Organizations learn from experience, but experience can be scarce meaning some organizations must learn from simulated (i.e. not real) experience. Research has typically studied experience from the real world, leaving us with little knowledge of how organizations learn from simulated experience. Drawing on ethnographic study of an elite military unit, we explore how inconsistencies in the reality, causality, and intentionality of simulated experience create significant ambiguity in the learning processes. The Yorkshire Rifles, starved of real-world experience for a decade, gain experience through international exercises that are simultaneously real and not real, with feedback decided by umpires, and actions shaped by the training context. We find three interpretive mechanisms used to address this ambiguity: (1) dismissing or promoting outcomes as realistic or unrealistic to address ambiguity of reality, (2) questioning or blaming umpire-mediated feedback to tackle causal ambiguity, and (3) reframing goals to address ambiguity of intentionality. These mechanisms are driven by the soldiers’ dual imperatives of maintaining a strong identity as an elite force and projecting a credible image at both individual and organizational levels. This study, therefore, makes important contributions to our understanding of organizational learning by examining learning from simulated experience as an important and understudied phenomenon.
