Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents

Author: James Reason
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134855354
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Major accidents are rare events due to the many barriers, safeguards and defences developed by modern technologies. But they continue to happen with saddening regularity and their human and financial consequences are all too often unacceptably catastrophic. One of the greatest challenges we face is to develop more effective ways of both understanding and limiting their occurrence. This lucid book presents a set of common principles to further our knowledge of the causes of major accidents in a wide variety of high-technology systems. It also describes tools and techniques for managing the risks of such organizational accidents that go beyond those currently available to system managers and safety professionals. James Reason deals comprehensively with the prevention of major accidents arising from human and organizational causes. He argues that the same general principles and management techniques are appropriate for many different domains. These include banks and insurance companies just as much as nuclear power plants, oil exploration and production companies, chemical process installations and air, sea and rail transport. Its unique combination of principles and practicalities make this seminal book essential reading for all whose daily business is to manage, audit and regulate hazardous technologies of all kinds. It is relevant to those concerned with understanding and controlling human and organizational factors and will also interest academic readers and those working in industrial and government agencies.

Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents

Author: James Reason
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134855427
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Organizational Accidents Revisited

Author: Professor James Reason
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472447670
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Book Description
Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents introduced the notion of an ‘organizational accident’. These are rare but often calamitous events that occur in complex technological systems operating in hazardous circumstances. They stand in sharp contrast to ‘individual accidents’ whose damaging consequences are limited to relatively few people or assets. Although they share some common causal factors, they mostly have quite different causal pathways. The frequency of individual accidents - usually lost-time injuries - does not predict the likelihood of an organizational accident. The book also elaborated upon the widely-cited Swiss Cheese Model. Organizational Accidents Revisited extends and develops these ideas using a standardised causal analysis of some 10 organizational accidents that have occurred in a variety of domains in the nearly 20 years that have passed since the original was published. These analyses provide the ‘raw data’ for the process of drilling down into the underlying causal pathways. Many contributing latent conditions recur in a variety of domains. A number of these - organizational issues, design, procedures and so on - are examined in close detail in order to identify likely problems before they combine to penetrate the defences-in-depth. Where the 1997 book focused largely upon the systemic factors underlying organisational accidents, this complementary follow-up goes beyond this to examine what can be done to improve the ‘error wisdom’ and risk awareness of those on the spot; they are often the last line of defence and so have the power to halt the accident trajectory before it can cause damage. The book concludes by advocating that system safety should require the integration of systemic factors (collective mindfulness) with individual mental skills (personal mindfulness).

Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents

Author: James Reason
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Presents a set of principles related to the causes of major accidents in high technology systems and describes tools and techniques for managing risks of such organizational accidents that go beyond those currently available to system managers and safety professionals. Deals with prevention of major accidents arising from human and organizational causes in many different domains, from banks and insurance companies to nuclear power plants and transport. For those working in management or regulation of hazardous technologies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Human Contribution

Author: J. T. Reason
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754674009
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
The Human Contribution is vital reading for all professionals in high-consequence environments and for managers of any complex system. The book draws its illustrative material from a wide variety of hazardous domains, with the emphasis on healthcare reflecting the author's focus on patient safety over the last decade. All students of human factors - however seasoned - will also find it an invaluable and thought-provoking read.

Managing Maintenance Error

Author: James Reason
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351920510
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
Situations and systems are easier to change than the human condition - particularly when people are well-trained and well-motivated, as they usually are in maintenance organisations. This is a down-to-earth practitioner’s guide to managing maintenance error, written in Dr. Reason’s highly readable style. It deals with human risks generally and the special human performance problems arising in maintenance, as well as providing an engineer’s guide for their understanding and the solution. After reviewing the types of error and violation and the conditions that provoke them, the author sets out the broader picture, illustrated by examples of three system failures. Central to the book is a comprehensive review of error management, followed by chapters on:- managing person, the task and the team; - the workplace and the organization; - creating a safe culture; It is then rounded off and brought together, in such a way as to be readily applicable for those who can make it work, to achieve a greater and more consistent level of safety in maintenance activities. The readership will include maintenance engineering staff and safety officers and all those in responsible roles in critical and systems-reliant environments, including transportation, nuclear and conventional power, extractive and other chemical processing and manufacturing industries and medicine.

Human Error

Author: James Reason
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521314190
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
This 1991 book is a major theoretical integration of several previously isolated literatures looking at human error in major accidents.

A Life in Error

Author: Professor James Reason
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472418417
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Book Description
This succinct but absorbing book covers the main way stations on James Reason’s 40-year journey in pursuit of the nature and varieties of human error. He presents an engrossing and very personal perspective, offering the reader exceptional insights, wisdom and wit as only James Reason can. A Life in Error charts the development of his seminal and hugely influential work from its original focus on individual cognitive psychology through the broadening of scope to embrace social, organizational and systemic issues.

How Safe is Safe Enough?

Author: Greg Alston
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351930192
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
Safety is not easy, it is a full time effort, and is equally important whether people are on the job or on personal time. If an organization is serious about mission success, it must take 'risk' seriously as well. Leaders need to be involved in the risk game at every turn, and understand the key elements (discussed throughout this book) that help them to win. Winning the risk game is what safety is all about. As in operational success, risk management requires the best human faculties to achieve victory; talent of organizational players and commitment from top leadership rule the day. The book covers leadership, safety programs, and risk management for organizations and individuals. It helps in professional development, grooming current and future leaders to understand their roles in safety and risk management. Central to the author’s message are: Seven truths of safety that the author discovered as a senior safety officer. Four roadblocks to achieving zero mishaps that must be aggressively addressed. Nine elements to risk reduction, with which leaders must become familiar. He establishes the importance of an organizational leader’s role in the safety/risk management game and provides the answer to, ’How safe is safe enough?’ Often, managers at various levels do not have an understanding of what goes into a safety program, this book tells them, from an expert's view. The readership includes: executives and middle management; all leaders as a professional development book and students. It is also a supplemental textbook for safety and risk management courses.

Beyond Aviation Human Factors

Author: Daniel E. Maurino
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351955691
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
The authors believe that a systematic organizational approach to aviation safety must replace the piecemeal approaches largely favoured in the past, but this change needs to be preceded by information to explain why a new approach is necessary. Accident records show a flattening of the safety curve since the early Seventies: instead of new kinds of accident, similar safety deficiencies have become recurrent features in accident reports. This suggests the need to review traditional accident prevention strategies, focused almost exclusively on the action or inaction’s of front-line operational personnel. The organizational model proposed by the authors is one alternative means to pursue safety and prevention strategies in contemporary aviation; it is also applicable to other production systems. The model argues for a broadened approach, which considers the influence of all organizations (the blunt end ) involved in aviation operations, in addition to individual human performance (the sharp end ). If the concepts of systems safety and organizational accidents are to be advanced, aviation management at all levels must be aware of them. This book is intended to provide a bridge from the academic knowledge gained from research, to the needs of practitioners in aviation. It comprises six chapters: the fundamentals, background and justification for an organizational accident causation model to the flight deck, maintenance and air traffic control environments. The last chapter suggest different ways to apply the model as a prevention tool which furthermore enhances organizational effectiveness. The value of the organizational framework pioneered by Professor Reason in analyzing safety in high-technology production systems is felt by his co-authors to have an enduring role to play, both now and in coming decades. Applied now in this book, it has been adopted by ICAO, IFATCA, IMO, the US National Transportation Safety Board, the Transportation Safety B