Eric Arne Lofquist

Safety Science 92 p. 241-256 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2016.11.002

Measuring the distance between the performance of safety rules as imagined and safety rules as enacted in high-risk environments has been an area of great interest and debate in recent years. Yet a significant gap in our understanding remains. Some authors have even advised us to “stop bitching about the gap” and start closing it (Hale and Borys, 2013a, p. 218). In this paper, we follow this call by investigating the relationship between safety rules as imagined, and enacted, in a rule-driven organization working in the oil and gas industry in Norway. Specifically, we investigate how three different sub-cultures within the organization: the management culture, the engineering culture, and the operations culture - make sense of safety rules at their respective levels, and why their interpretations of the gaps created by these same rules, are different. These differences lead to different levels of rule enactment. Using a case study approach, we found that how employees’ were engaged in the rule creation process led to different levels of psychological ownership, and this, in turn, led to different levels of rule enactment. We also found that these distinct occupational sub-cultures use different sensemaking approaches in understanding safety rules, and that the resultant differences in understanding directly affects both the understanding of the gap that exists between rules as imagined and rules as enacted, leading to different levels of rule compliance.

Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 53(4) p. 417-445 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886317711892

Military Psychology Doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/mil0000123

Coordination is critical to the success of multinational military operations and may be fostered by predeployment training. We argue that whether such training is related to a high degree of perceived coordination at the individual level is likely to depend on whether individuals experience a low degree of organizational obstacles to information sharing. We examined this using data from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Kosovo Force headquarters (survey: n = 131). We controlled for whether it was the participants’ first deployment, the participants’ background (military or civilian), the amount of time spent in the headquarters by participants, whether differences pertaining to culture and opinions were valued by the organization, the quality of supervisor/subordinate relationships, and the degree of national cultural obstacles to information sharing. The results showed no significant direct effects on coordination from 3 different training configurations: national training, multinational training, and a combination of national and multinational training. However, we found a negative direct effect from organizational obstacles to information sharing on coordination, and support for organizational obstacles to information sharing as negatively moderating the multinational predeployment training and coordination relationship. Qualitative interviews (n = 14) indicated that informal information sharing, and the problems exchanging information from tactical to operational levels could hinder coordination. Interventions to foster coordination could benefit from a focus on multinational training and lowering organizational obstacles to information sharing. Our findings contribute to more precisely pinpointing the types of training that are useful in multinational operations, as well as the factors upon which training transfer is contingent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Change Management 11(2) p. 223-243 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2010.527853

Safety Science 49(3) p. 531-541 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2010.11.007

Safety Science 48(10) p. 1520-1529 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2010.05.006

Measuring safety as an outcome variable within the ultra-safe civil aviation industry during periods of deliberate organizational change is a difficult, and often fruitless, task. Anticipating eroding safety processes, based on measuring nothing happening over time, does not adequately capture the true state of an evolving safe system, and this is particularly relevant for leaders and managers in a civil aviation industry responsible for maintaining and improving ultra-safe performance while simultaneously managing demanding strategic business goals. In this paper, I will look at the difficulties of measuring safety as an outcome measure in high reliability organizations (HROs) using the traditional measures of incident and accident reporting during periods of deliberate organizational change inspired by the desults from a three-year longitudinal case study of the Norwegian Air Navigation Services provider - Avinor. I will first review the current safety literature relating to Safety Management Systems (SMSs) used in the civil aviation industry. I will then propose a more holistic model that shifts the focus from the traditional safety monitoring mechanisms of risk analysis and trial and error learning, to the natural interactivity within socio-technical systems as found in High Reliability Organizations. And finally, I will present a summary of the empirical results of an alternate methodology for measuring perceived changes in safety at the operational level as leading indicators of evolving safety at at the organizational level.