Hi alf,
As always, good points. I agree with you, HFACS and similar systems do have their limitations. And yes, in a perfect world, all leaders would utilize a the resilient, highly reliable model of operations proposed by Hollenagel, Woods, Levinson, Dekker, Alemberti, Weick, Sutcliffe and others to accommodate human variability and detect 'drift to failure' before things drift too far. However, and as 76's original post indicates, some leaders (managers?) have not reached this point, and still play the blame game. In these cases, HFACS (or SHELL, etc.) could be a useful tool to explore why the crew/maintainer in question made the decisions/took the actions they did, and the factors that affected a successful outcome, a sort of 'gateway drug', you might say, to a more mature exploration and accommodation of HF in the organization. It also has some traction as an investigation tool in the RW world; this may make it an easier 'sell' for 76 as he navigates his situation. Of course, as he indicated in an earlier post, the investigation is only as good as the information provided, and the organizational culture may be a limiting factor.
76, I hope all is going well on your end.
J.