The safety culture of so-called high-reliability organizations (HROs) encompasses values, routines, and work processes that allow an organization to prevent mistakes and quickly bounce back if unexpected events occur. It is said to provide a model for improving organizational resilience in the offshore oil and gas industry, where small errors can grow into accidents with devastating environmental, social, and economic impacts. To date, such a transfer of successful practices is impeded by a lack of system perspective that would allow researchers and practitioners to fully understand the safety dynamics in HROs, adjust them to the unique setting of offshore oil and gas, plan safety interventions, and anticipate the direct and indirect effects of these interventions.In this dissertation, I have developed and rigorously tested a model of how safety interventions impact the interdependent aspects of the HROs' characteristics, based on peer-reviewed research, an industry workshop, and a survey of offshore oil and gas practitioners. This approach combines the qualitative research methods of Thematic Analysis (TA) and Thematic Network (TN) with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) modeling and simulation, and Exploratory Modelling and Analysis (EMA). Furthermore, I developed a thematic proximity measure to determine the weights of the edges in the FCMs based on research texts, thus reducing the need for including subject matter experts in modeling studies.This work makes several contributions: on a theoretical level, it shows the inherent dynamics of HROs and points to several limitations in existing High Reliability Organizations Theory (HROT) as well as uncertainties regarding the efficacy of some Firstly, I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my advisor Prof.Antonie Jetter for the endless support of my Ph.D. study and the related research for her patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. Her guidance helped me tremendously in all the time of research and writing of this dissertation. Besides, I am so grateful for being her student, and I am also very thankful for knowing her on a personal level, which helped me, even more, to cope with difficult times and roughnecks in this journey. Without her, this work would not be as it is today. I also would like to thank my dissertation committee members: Prof. Wayne Wakeland, Prof. Charles Weber, and Prof. Steven Scyphers, for their delightful guidance, insightful comments, continuous support, and encouragement, but also for the tough questions they have used to ask me, which motivated me, even more, to widen my research from various perspectives.Moreover, I would like to thank all my beloved family members for their sincere and indefinite love, real courage, continuous support, and enthusiasm for reaching this. Being a part of my wonderful family, where love is widely spread, minds are always opened, and education and knowledge are so encouraged and welcomed, have always helped me make my dreams come true. I also would like to thank my very dear friends, ...
In a developing country like Iraq, where the infrastructure of the electricity public sector (production, transportation, and distribution) has suffered for a long time from the direct effects of successive wars; lack of technocracy; bureaucracy; neglect; massive corruption; and much more, have all contributed to the failure of this sector. Indeed, the electricity sector in Iraq has not been developed for more than forty years; or even properly rehabilitated and/or maintained its facilities, which has led to a huge gap between the demand and supply (demand is double than the supply). It is obvious that the alternative solutions that have been proposed and implemented since 2003 have not become a solution that could fill even a small portion of the gap. In this paper, a proposed solution that seemingly has never been given a chance to be put on the table by both private and public sectors will be discussed. An assessment for photovoltaic solar panels technologies as an effective, viable, and quick solution for the infrastructure and demand problem was conducted using the Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) as a methodology to assess the most efficient, and affordable candidate technologies relevant to all the valid perspectives and criteria. 2018 Proceedings of PICMET '18: Technology Management for Interconnected World 978-1-890843-37-3 ©2018 PICMET Political Perception for Energy: Are politicians differentiate among the alternatives in term of perceptions and acceptance? If they do, which one is more preferred? How important is this criterion when compared with other criteria under the political perspectives? Alternatives Crystalline Silicon (C-Si): It is the crystalline forms of silicon and is the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the production of solar cells. Copper Indium Gallium (di) Selenide (CIGS): It is a composed of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium. The material is a solid solution of copper indium selenide (often abbreviated "CIS") and copper gallium selenide. Cadmium Telluride Photovoltaics (CdTe): It describes a photovoltaic (PV) technology that is based on the use of cadmium telluride, a thin semiconductor layer designed to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity.
It is common for accident reports and the analysis of large-scale disasters, such as the Deepwater Horizon blowout, to point to communication failures. This narrow explanation implicitly assumes that accidents could be prevented if employees spoke up about safety. In contrast, the first author of this paper, whose professional experience is introduced in this Commentary to provide context, has frequently observed that there are, in fact, many cases when employees speak up but are not listened to. These patterns of communication (or lack thereof) occur at the intersection of personal, leadership, and organizational factors, which jointly affect how safety issues are recognized, communicated, and addressed. As such, communication problems are at "the tip of the iceberg" of safety problems, not at their root. In this paper, we review research on high-reliability organizations (HROs) with excellent safety records to identify their communication patterns and practices and how they contribute to the ability to enact five principles of HROs: preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify, deference to expertise, commitment to resilience, and sensitivity to operations. We then apply this lens to investigate the Deepwater Horizon disaster, based on court documents, expert reports, and personal interviews. Specifically, we investigate how the communication patterns between the onshore experts and the offshore crews compared to the recommendations of HRO theory and how existing discrepancies might help explain the accident. We found that many employees were aware of safety issues and communicated concerns openly, but there was little organizational response to the issues they raised. This failure to listen was largely owed to factors that were not directly related to communication, such as time pressure and lack of resources, and a culture that valued a "can do attitude" and getting things done so much that it got in the way of sensitivity to operations, expert-based guidance, and communication about problems. Moreover, the challenges of the project and its aggressive timeline created an extreme, almost toxic, commitment to resilience. Based on these findings, we discuss recommendations for improving safety in offshore oil and gas production.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.