The title of this paper might not be an eye-catching, attention grabbing headline requiring action, but this text could be one of the most valuable contributions to safety management in modern times.
Resilience emerges at the end, almost as it had to be mentioned; however in context, the paper seeks to enhance resilience. Similarly it relates to High Reliability, and the need to understand how work is done.
A very thoughtful and thought provoking paper, which should be read and reviewed more than once; complexity evolves, risk changes, thus continually revisit the views of risk, less we use fantasy planning.
'Fantasy Planning'; Hutchinson, Dekker, Rae
https://www.researchgate.net/profile...of-systems.pdf
(select join researchgate for free)
From some of the references:
'No Safety in Numbers: Persistence of Biases and Their Effects on Team Risk Perception and Team Decision Making.'
Because individuals can have cognitive biases that lower their perceptions of decision risk, some suggest that teams, not individuals, should make decisions. Prior research, however, has not explored whether a team’s risk perception is affected by information-processing biases that are similar to the cognitive biases that individuals exhibit. This study examines whether three biases—the law of small numbers bias, illusion of control, and overconfidence—influence perception of risk of a first move at the team and individual levels. It was found that the law of small numbers and illusion of control decreased the risk perception at both levels and that the law of small numbers had a significantly greater effect on team risk perception than on individual risk perception. In contrast, the effect of overconfidence was not significant at any level.
'Examining the asymptote in safety progress: A literature review'
https://safety177496371.wordpress.com/2021/07/05/examining-the-asymptote-in-safety-progress-a-literature-review
Many industries are confronted by plateauing safety performance as measured by the absence of negative events, particularly lower-consequence incidents or injuries. At the same time, these industries are sometimes surprised by large fatal accidents that seem to have no connection with their understanding of the risks they faced; or with how they were measuring safety. This article reviews the safety literature to examine how both these surprises and the asymptote are linked to the very structures and practices organizations have in place to manage safety. The article finds that safety practices associated with compliance, control and quantification could be partly responsible. These can create a sense of invulnerability through safety performance close to zero; organizational resources can get deflected into unproductive or counterproductive initiatives; obsolete practices for keeping human performance within a pre-specified bandwidth are sustained; and accountability relationships can encourage suppression of the 'bad news' necessary to learn and improve.
http://sidneydekker.stackedsite.com/...Pitzer2016.pdf
'Safety Management in a World Beyond Simplification'
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/safet...aign=share_via