High reliability organization

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A High Reliability Organization (HRO) is an organization that has succeeded in avoiding catastrophes in an environment where normal accidents can be expected due to risk factors and complexity.

Important case studies in HRO research include the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear incident, the Challenger explosion, the Bhopal chemical leak, the Tenerife air crash, the Mann Gulch forest fire, the Black Hawk friendly fire incident in Iraq, the Columbia explosion, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the 2003 decision of the United States to invade Iraq.

1 History
2 Characteristics
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] History

The roots of HRO theory were built in a stream of theoretical advances by Karlene H. Roberts (UC Berkeley), Herbert Simon, James March, and Karl Weick (University of Michigan) -- who shifted attention away from organizations as rational machines to organizations as arenas in which complex organizational processes occur. The Cuban Missile Crisis was analyzed through this emerging lens by Graham Allison in his 1971 book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Other important HRO roots -- because they explore the phenomenon of deviation-amplifying loops -- include Cohen, March, and Olson's study of garbage-can decision-making processes, Barry Turner's work on catastrophes, and Barry Staw, Lance Sandelands, and Jane Dutton's research on "threat-rigidity cycles."

The most important early work in HRO research was organizational sociologist Charles Perrow’s work on the Three Mile Island nuclear incident in 1979. Perrow's 1984 book ^[1] included chapters on nuclear incidents, petrochemical plants, aviation accidents, naval accidents, "earth-based system" accidents (dam breaks, earthquakes), and "exotic" accidents (genetic engineering, military operations, and space flight). In rapid succession after the publication of Perrow's book, researchers were confronted with the Chernobyl disaster, the Bhopal chemical leak, and the Challenger explosion.

An initial conference at the University of Texas in April 1987 brought researchers together to focus attention on HROs. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the George Washington University and many other universities around the world began to look at organizations in high-risk industries.

At Berkeley, initial research on HROs was done within the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control Center, a commercial nuclear power plant, and naval aircraft carriers.

[edit] Characteristics

Researchers have found that successful organizations in high-risk industries continually reinvent themselves. For example, when an incident command team realizes what they thought was a garage fire has now changed into a hazardous material incident, they completely restructure their response organization. HRO teams are comfortable and adept at quickly building creative responses to failure. Failure happens, and HRO teams lean on their training, experience and imagination as a reliable means to recover from failure.^{[citation needed]}

There are 5 characteristics of High Reliability Organizations that have been identified ^[2] as responsible for the "mindfulness" that keeps them working well when facing unexpected situations.

Preoccupation with failure
Reluctance to simplify interpretations
Sensitivity to operations
Commitment to resilience
Deference to expertise

[edit] Notes

^ Perrow, Charles (1999). Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-6910-0412-9.
^ Weick, Karl E.; Kathleen M. Sutcliffe (2001). Managing the Unexpected - Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey-Bass, 10-17. ISBN 0-7879-5627-9.