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

Saunders, Fiona C.; Gale, Andrew W; Sherry, Andrew H.

doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.06.008

Cited by 32 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(61 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Several authors suggested characteristics of HROs that enhance their ability to be successful in specific operating environments, and some suggested all five hallmarks are not required. A summary of the findings follows: Five articles suggested additional hallmarks that are specific to high risk, high‐tempo industries: Khorsandi and Aven (2014) suggested risk management capabilities are essential to HROs as they reduce uncertainty, which increases reliability. Leveson, Dulac, Marais, and Carroll (2009) stress HROs must take a system approach to safety and risk management and must create technical and organizational designs requiring the fewest tradeoffs between safety and other system (organizational) goals while remaining sensitive to risk. Saunders, Gale, and Sherry (2016) generated practices and behaviours under the five hallmarks (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001) that might be observed in high‐reliability project organizing. In addition to the solid management and leadership characteristics that are essential, they suggested the ability to prosper in the paradoxes is essential for HRO projects.…”

Section: Results/findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many common theories were applied (e.g., resilience theory, communication theory, leadership theory, risk theory, organization theory, organization design theory, systems theory, decision theory, complexity theory, control theory, expectancy theory and redundancy theory), all of which appeared multiple times throughout the literature as explanatory support for various aspects of the HRO. In addition, some novel theories or models were also occasionally applied such as paradox theory (Milosevic, Bass, & Combs, 2015; Saunders et al., 2016), and Thorngate's impostulate of theoretical simplicity (Vidal, 2015).…”

Section: Results/findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

High Reliability Organization (HRO) systematic literature review: Discovery of culture as a foundational hallmark

Cantu

Tolk

Fritts³

et al. 2020

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The term “high reliability organization” (HRO) evolved from research countering the claim by Perrow after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant incident that “accidents happen,” implying that failures were inevitable. Soon after the publication of Perrow's book researchers began questioning his assertion, by observing that some organizations exhibited significantly higher rates of reliability. In 2001, Weick and Sutcliffe converged on five principles, or hallmarks, which became the de facto characteristics most often cited since. Since 2001, HRO theory spread to non‐high‐risk industries and the amount of published literature has more than doubled, including several literature reviews. This led to the questions, “how has HRO theory evolved since the seminal research, how far has it spread from high risk industries, and what is the focus of HRO research?” Seeking to capture the breadth of spread of HRO as well as the dominant areas of research and practice, a comprehensive literature review was performed to capture the most current state of theory and practice. The results show HRO theory within the published literature has not significantly evolved past the original characteristics and hallmarks. Though the theoretical implications have not changed much the practical implications have grown and spread throughout the critical infrastructure sectors. In conclusion, the research team believes that a culture of reliability is the sixth hallmark that works synergistically with certain foundational organizational characteristics and allows mindfulness, which is the distinctive hallmark of HROs, to thrive and grow. This is the fundamental difference between “reliable” and “highly reliable” operations and differentiates HROs from well‐run organizations that are not HROs.

show abstract

Section: Results/findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Results/findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Reliability Organization (HRO) systematic literature review: Discovery of culture as a foundational hallmark

Cantu

Tolk

Fritts³

et al. 2020

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In general management literature, project managers are typically studied as temporary team leaders, whose competences are “team-level individual factors” directly associated with team performance (Ahearn, Ferris, Hochwarter, Douglas, & Ammeter, 2004; Day, Gronn, & Salas, 2006). With projects approaching closure, there tend to be far fewer technical uncertainties, and the remaining uncertainties are more attributable to managerial activities (Saunders, Gale, & Sherry, 2016). So, effective project management to address managerial uncertainties is particularly valuable and thus explanatory of PCP.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Project Managers’ Competences in Managing Project Closing

Wen

Qiang

2019

Project Management Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Closing is a strategic but frequently overlooked project phase, in which project managers play pivotal roles as project team leaders. This study pinpoints project managers’ competences underpinning the effective management of project closing, defined as project managers’ closing competence (PMCC). A conceptual model of how PMCC contributes to project closing performance (PCP) was developed from related literature. Based on questionnaire data from 163 project management practitioners, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the model and identify the most influential PMCC dimensions and indicators. The results reveal four PMCC dimensions (i.e., knowledge and skills, external stakeholder management, leadership in project team, and organization-level ability) significantly affecting PCP. The PLS-SEM results also quantify the relative importance of the indicators in each PMCC dimension. Comparing the findings with recent literature, we found that risk awareness, closing contract relationships, helping staff with career planning, participating in project closing decisions, and obtaining support from other departments are crucial aspects of PMCC that deserve more attention in research and practice. The findings heed the call for identifying competences according to project tasks, and operationalize PMCC and PCP into detailed indicators. The proposed PMCC framework also provides practical implications for project manager evaluation and selection.

show abstract

“…These unknowns could be foreseen but for various reasons (e.g., barriers to cognition) are not. Furthermore, in managing unforeseen events, Saunders et al (2016) observed high reliability practices in their study [see, for example, Weick et al (2008)] into safety-critical projects. However, these practices are often fragile in nature and dependent on key individuals.…”

Section: Dealing With Surprise Events In Critical Asset Introductionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Graceful extensibility in asset management: extending the capacity to adapt in managing cyber-physical railway systems

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Graceful extensibility has been recently introduced and can be defined as the ability of a system to extend its capacity to adapt when surprise events challenge its boundaries. It provides basic rules that govern adaptive systems. Railway transportation systems can be considered cyber-physical systems that comprise interacting digital, analog, physical, and human components engineered for safe and reliable railway transport. This enables autonomous driving, new functionalities to achieve higher capacity, greater safety, and real-time health monitoring. New rolling stock introductions require continuous adaptations to meet the challenges of these complex railway systems as an introduction takes several years to complete and deals with changing stakeholder demands, new technologies, and technical constraints which cannot be fully predicted in advance. To sustain adaptability when introducing new rolling stock, the theory of graceful extensibility might be valuable but needs further empirical testing to be useful in the field. This study contributes by assessing the proto-theorems of graceful extensibility in a case study in the railway industry by means of adopting pattern-matching analysis. The results of this study indicate that the majority of theoretical patterns postulated by the theory are corroborated by the data. Guidelines are proposed for further operationalization of the theory in the field. Furthermore, case results indicate the need to adopt management approaches that accept indeterminism as a complement to the prevailing deterministic perspective, to sustain adaptability and deal effectively with surprise events. As such, this study may serve other critical asset introductions dealing with cyber-physical systems in their push for sustained adaptability.

show abstract

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

Cited by 32 publications

References 47 publications

High Reliability Organization (HRO) systematic literature review: Discovery of culture as a foundational hallmark

High Reliability Organization (HRO) systematic literature review: Discovery of culture as a foundational hallmark

Project Managers’ Competences in Managing Project Closing

Graceful extensibility in asset management: extending the capacity to adapt in managing cyber-physical railway systems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About