Organisations, risk and knowledge

Both this deep assumption and this broader theme run throughout many of the dominant theories of organisational accidents and sociotechnical failure. They also animate and frame many explorations of the social and organisational sources of safety. These issues can be seen in the original work on accidents and disasters that has shaped this field, and they resonate in current debates on the nature of safety, resilience and improvement. They also define and delineate the core concerns of this book. 

Perhaps the most popular and widespread theory of organisational accidents - amongst practitioners working in the field, at least - focuses on the activity of humans in their organisational context and how both those activities and that context can go awry. Led by Reason s (1990, 

Swiss cheese is a common item on the menu when safety professionals meet, and the principles and tools developed by Reason and his colleagues have proved popular and productive in practice (e.g. Maurino et al., 1997 Australian Transport Safety Bureau, 2004 Vincent et al., 2000). The problematic relationship between risk, practice and knowledge is at the heart of this theory of organisational accidents, though how or why latent conditions become - or remain - latent is relatively 

Organisational risks can both arise from and be perpetuated by unevenly distributedknowledge, partial communication and assumptions that blinker and limit perception. Turner describes how, over time, events and circumstances that are discrepant with peoples currently held knowledge and beliefs can accumulate in organisations. This insidious process 

At the heart of these cultural theories is the idea of ignorance and the deep problems associated with generating effective knowledge about organisational technologies, practices and associated risks (e.g. Smithson, 1989, 1990 Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld, 1999  

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