Organisational characteristics human

With the greater emphasis on the human factors approach to health and safety, there is a need to actually identify those organisational characteristics that influence safety-related behaviour. These include ... 

A further characteristic feature of the evolutionary psychology argument is to point to the relatively short period, in geological and evolutionary terms, over which Homo sapiens - and, in particular, modern society - has appeared. Forms of behaviour or social organisation which evolved adaptively over many generations in human hunter-gatherer society may or may not be adaptive in modern industrial society, but have, it is claimed, become to a degree fixed by humanity s evolutionary experience in the palaeolithic EEA. Hence, they are now relatively unmodifiable, even if dysfunctional. 

Organisation is characteristic feature of the biosphere. Human society is a functional part of this process. 

Actual behaviour often differs from behaviour intended in the normative part of organisational behaviour. Actual behaviour not only depends on individual human characteristics, but also on relationships and interactions between people who bring... 

The UK Health and Safety Executive believe that an individual s actions at work depend upon a number of human factors which they define as Human factors r er to environmental, organisational and job factors, and human and individual characteristics which influence behaviour at work in a way which can affect health and safety. They suggest that human factors can best be xmderstood by considering three aspects. 

Safety concern (question) Answer characteristics for technology Answer characteristics for human factors Answer characteristics for organisations... 

Regardless of the variety of HRA methods available to enable practitioners to assess the risks associated with human error by estimating its probability, the substantially high uncertainties related to the human behavioural characteristics, interlaced with actual technology aspects and organisational context, turn this kind of evaluation into a very complicated matter, raising reasonable concern about the accuracy and practicality of such probabilities. 

The HRO model (High Reliability Organizations) uses the same idea of resilience, since it also promotes adaptation, but this is a kind of adaptation which is more local and controlled, involving human activities which are clearly better organised, with less of a tendency to seek out daring exploits (which is more characteristic of the pure resilient model). The HRO model is in fact relatively averse to individual exploits that are not controlled by the group. 

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