Balance between Abstract Principles and Concrete Instances in Knowledge Communication

In tasks requiring dealing with variable situations, workers are expected to do more than following prescribed instructions. In this paper, we presented our view and framework for creating instructions with a good balance between the flexibility of abstract principles and the preciseness of concrete instances, which aims at helping instruction receivers become capable of dealing with variable situations where no concrete instructions are available. Our approach represents knowledge using an abstraction hierarchy. It is situated in our grand model which deals with the whole picture of knowledge communication. A case study is also presented, which suggests that seen in our view existing manuals can be improved by providing them with principles combined with instance-dependent variables.