Organizational culture, human factors

According to the ACSNl Study Group on Human Factors (HSC, 1993), a written corporate statement on the safety policy and organization should be a crucial element in the promotion and maintenance of a positive safety culture within the organization. Its objective should be to establish the corporate attitude to safety and the organizational framework through which the safety objectives can be assured. (Health and Safety Executive, 2001, p. 8)... 

Reliability and Safety Data Collection and Analysis Fault Identification and Diagnostics Maintenance Modelling and Optimisation Structural Reliability and Design Codes Software Reliability Consequence Modelling Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis Safety Culture Organizational Learning Human Factors... 

Bazargan, M. (2004), Air line Operations and Scheduling, Aldershot, UK Ashgate. Falconer, B.T. (2005), Cultural Challenges in Australian Mihtaiy Aviation Soft Issues at the Sharp End, Human Factors and Aerospace Safety, 5, No. 1,61-79. Helmreich, R.L. and Merritt, A.C. (1998), Culture at Work in Aviation and Medicine National, Organizational and Professional Influences, Aldershot, UK Ashgate. 

However, this approach alone provides little or no insight into the real causes of failure. Underlying causes of serious corrosion damage often include human factors such as lack of corrosion awareness and inadequate training and poor communication. Further underlying causes may include weak maintenance management systems, insufficient repairs due to short-term profit motives, a poor organizational "safety culture," defective supplier s products, or an incorrect material selection. 

In companies which do not employ Human Factors experts these numbers can be expected to be much worse. Probably organizational or cultural changes are necessary to improve access to, and acceptance of. Human Factors experts. 

The last area addressed by the systems approach is concerned with global issues involving the influence of organizational factors on human error. The major issues in this area are discussed in Chapter 2, Section 7. The two major perspectives that need to be considered as part of an error reduction program are the creation of an appropriate safety culture and the inclusion of human error reduction within safety management policies. 

The first area focuses on the cultural and organizational factors that will have a major influence on the effectiveness of a human error data collection system and how well the information derived from such a system is translated into successful error reduction strategies. Regardless of how effectively the technical issues are dealt with, the system will not be successful imless there is a culture in the organization which provides support for the data gathering process. No data collection system aimed at identifying human error causes of accidents will be workable without the active cooperation of the workforce. 

While there are a number of factors driving the implementation of PAT in pharmaceutical development and manufacture, it can also be said that there are a number of barriers. The magnitude of these barriers is profoundly affected by the organizational culture within each pharmaceutical manufacturer, and frequently across sites within a single company. Several of these cultural issues have been spelled out in the literature,14 5 and there are additional issues related to the absence of infrastructure (both physical and human). A number of the potential impediments are cited here to provide context for those unfamiliar with the area. 

From his analyses of several events, he identifies the common causes of human error and the typical system deficiencies that led to those errors. Those deficiencies were principally organizational, cultural, technical, and management systems failures. (I draw similar conclusions from studies of causal factors for incidents resulting in serious injuries.)... 

Several references were made in Chapter 3, Serious Injury Prevention, to human errors as the causal factors for accidents. And it was said that many serious injuries result from recurring but potentially avoidable human errors, and that organizational, cultural, technical, and management systems deficiencies often lead to those errors. Emphasizing human error reduction above the worker level, although proposed many years ago as a preventive measure, is not prominent in the work of safety professionals. 

A systems perspectives is taken, which views error as a natural consequence of a mismatch between human capabilities and demands, and an inappropriate organizational culture. From this perspective, the factors that directly influence error are ultimately controllable by management. 

Over and over, writers and researchers have reiterated that errors are made at an organizational, managerial and design levels, that they form a distinctive corporate culture and create error-producing factors within the occupational setting. Minimizing the probability of such human errors occurring is the new frontier for safety professionals. 

---