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Enabling Resilience: An Examination of High Reliability Organizations and Safety Culture Through the Lens of Appreciative Inquiry

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Disaster Management: Enabling Resilience

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Social Networks ((LNSN))

Abstract

Dulac (A framework for dynamic safety and risk management modelling in complex engineering systems. MIT, Cambridge, 2007) argues that complex socio-technical systems have a tendency to slowly drift from a safe state toward a higher risk state, where they are highly vulnerable to small disturbances whereby seemingly inconsequential events can precipitate an accident. Recent socio-technical disasters such as the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear accident, 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident and 2005 refinery explosions at BP’s Texas City all highlight major disasters in which a safety culture was not working. Many industries around the world are showing an increasing interest in the concept of ‘safety culture’ as a means of reducing the potential for large-scale disasters, and accidents associated with routine tasks (Cooper Saf Sci 36:111–136, 2008). Traditional root cause methods of analysis examining safety culture apply a deficiency model in which problems are identified to support corrective action and transformational change. Within this paradigm one asks: “What are the problems?”, “What’s wrong?” or “What needs to be fixed?” Here we introduce a paradigm shift from a deficiency based approach to a strength based approach through the advent of “Appreciative Inquiry” (AI). The Appreciative Inquiry model is based on the assumption that the questions we ask will tend to focus our attention in a particular direction. Appreciative Inquiry stands out as a methodology that can facilitate examination and ‘construction’ of safety culture. As a high engagement, strength-based approach to organizational change, AI focuses on aligning strengths of the organization with opportunities, aspirations and desired results and transforming goals into action fostering organizational learning at its core. Drawing upon the literature on AI, High Reliability Organizations and safety culture, this chapter presents appreciative inquiry as a tool-set to facilitate structured analysis and construction of the qualities of a safety culture of excellence to support a High Reliability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Jerson Wattie & Anthony J. Masys

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  1. Jerson Wattie
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  2. Anthony J. Masys
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Correspondence to Anthony J. Masys .

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  1. Centre for Security Science, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Anthony Masys

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Wattie, J., Masys, A.J. (2015). Enabling Resilience: An Examination of High Reliability Organizations and Safety Culture Through the Lens of Appreciative Inquiry. In: Masys, A. (eds) Disaster Management: Enabling Resilience. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08819-8_9

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