Issues in safety science

Safety Management Systems as communication in an oil and gas producing company

“…An important point in NAT is that a central organisation is needed to control systems with tight couplings, while systems with high interactive complexity must be controlled by a decentralised organisation. According to Perrow (1984), in organisations with tight coupling and interactive complexity these requirements cannot be met, and hence, accidents are inevitable (Boin & Hart, 2008;Haavik, 2014;Hopkins, 2014;Lekka, 2011;Perrow, 1984;Weick et al, 1999). NAT has been described as a technologically deterministic approach which emphasises that the technical design of the system has huge implications for safety, and that major accidents are caused by a mismatch between the properties of the technology to be controlled and the structure of the organisation responsible for controlling the technology .…”

“…There have been debates concerning the usefulness of NAT. Hopkins (2014) argued that the theory has not been useful at all when it comes to explaining the major accidents of our time. In fact, Perrow himself acknowledged that most high profile accidents in recent decades were caused by poor management, cost pressure and such, and not the inevitable result of tight coupling and complexity (Perrow, 1994).…”

Implementing Healthcare Improvement

“…This term was coined during the research, and there have been numerous definitions of what an HRO might look like. This has not been without controversy, and it has been suggested that it is actually not possible to identify objectively whether an organisation is, or is not, an HRO [25,26]. Based on the HRO research, Carl Weick and colleagues developed a model of what they then referred to as "mindful organisation" [27].…”

Responding to project uncertainty: Evidence for high reliability practices in large-scale safety–critical projects

“…First, there has been a long-running debate between both normal accident theory and high reliability theory as rival explanations of safe performance in safety-critical environments (cf. (Hopkins, 2014;Leveson, Dulac, Marais, & Carroll, 2009;Rijpma, 1997). Normal Accident Theory contends that the highly-complex and tightly inter-coupled nature of complex socio-technological industrial systems such as nuclear power plants, makes accidents inevitable and to be expected.…”

“…Olde Scholtenhuis & Doree, 2013). The third point of contention is whether theories of high reliability organising are at all empirically testable; if HROs cannot be identified a priori, then it is impossible to assess whether they actually possess the defining characteristics of HROs (Hopkins, 2014).…”