Organizational and Social Factors

The various PIFs discussed so far provide a basis for the control of human error at the level of the individual. This section will consider various factors related to the performance of the team and the management practices related to safety. 

Modem process plants grow increasingly complex with highly coupled unit processes. A result of this tendency is that tasks now often require a team rather than individual effort. Team training becomes increasingly important for the safe and efficient operation of plants. The aim of this section is to identify those PIFs which play a critical role in the collective efforts and communications of process workers. 

Given the limited resources that a plant can provide for training, a critical question arises concerning emphasis which must be given to individual or team training. Many accident scenarios involve well-trained personnel who failed to work collectively under the particular conditions of the task. We need, therefore, some guidelines to judge the relevant importance of individual versus team performance for different types of tasks. 

Blum and Naylor (1968) reviewed the literature on group versus individual training and proposed a useful mle. For tasks which are highly interrelated and which require a great deal of communication and cooperation among 

To judge the quality of team performance it is necessary to examine the following PIFs distribution of workload, clarity of responsibilities, communications, team structure and leadership, and finally, group planning and orientation. 

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The extent to which a particular combination of such "operating environment" factors will be perceived by the workers as being stressful will depend on the available resources such as the quality of the control panel, procedures, training, organizational and social factors, and, finally, the individual characteristics of the workers. The outcome of this transaction between stress factors and coping resources will influence the onset of worker stress. Situations are not stressful merely because of the presence of a number of external stressors, but because they are perceived as such by workers. 

Event-based models are limited in their ability to represent accidents as complex processes, particularly at representing systemic accident factors such as structural deficiencies in the organization, management deficiencies, and flaws in the safety culture of the company or industry. We need to understand how the whole system, including the organizational and social components, operating together, led to the loss. While some extensions to event-chain models have been proposed, all are unsatisfactory in important ways. 

Additional system safety requirements and constraints, including those on operations and maintenance or upgrades will be used in the design of the safety control structure at the organizational and social system levels above the physical system. There is no one correct safety control structure what is practical and effective will depend greatly on cultural and other factors. Some general principles that apply to all safety control structures are described in chapter 13. These principles need to be combined with specific system safety requirements and constraints for the particular system involved to design the control structure. 

Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WRMSD) are an individual, organizational and social problem with high costs (Putz-Anderson et al., 1997). They are a common health problem and a leading cause of disability in the European Union (David et al, 2008, Schneider Irastorza, 2010), as well as in many industrialized countries (Westgaard Winkel, 991). The adoption of extreme postures, the repetition of movements, the force exerted, and the exposure to vibration and extreme temperatures are often pointed out as the main risk factors for the development of WRMSD (Putz-Anderson et al, 1997, Punnett Wegman, 2004, Larsson et al, 2007). 

More recent studies have highlighted the social, organizational and group factors as explanatory of the adoption of safety behaviours, highlighting the... 

Social responsibility under the present conditions of globalization reflects the whole complex of relations within the framework of a market economy. The most important component of social responsibility is the essence of business and its contribution to economy. But, business cannot exist isolated from society. It depends on a multitude of factors, important among which are human, organizational, and financial resources. Eventually, recognition of the economic potential of a country as a main element of the NSS will be the norm. 

Carmel S, GlickSM. 2001. Compassionate-empathic physicians Personality traits and social-organizational factors that enhance or inhibit this behavior pattern. Soc Sci Afe/43 1253. 

Leveson states, STAMP integrates into engineering analysis the causal factors in om increasingly complex systems. These causal factors include software, human-decision making and hiunan factors, new technology, social and organizational design. 

Human Factors (HF) is a discipline that covers the social, organizational and individual human factors aspects of a system in its context of use (i.e real time). HF analyses primarily adi ess the need to match technology with humans... 

Like most accidents and disasters, the Columbia disaster did not have just one isolated cause. Many historical, social, political, and technological factors interacted across different organizational levels and in different subsystems to create unsafe conditions, unrealistic expectations, and faulty decision-making (chapter 14). For example, imbalanced goals and ineffective learning combined with production pressures and fragmented problem-solving that missed cross-checks and the big picture (chapter 15). 

Any community s ability to respond constructively to change will be driven by the nature and quality of the community s leadership, and the effectiveness and coherence of the community s economic, social and civic networks. While strong individual leadership, whatever that may precisely mean, and the existence of social capital (Putnam, 2001) are both salient factors in a community s ability to change, even more important may be the manner in which the city s organizational and leadership networks interact and cooperate discussing a city that has weathered de-industrialization with relative success, Safford (2009 9) notes that its economic... 

This point of view is consistent with modern safety approaches, e.g, the deviation concept (Kjellen 1984) or the systems approach (Summala 1985). Human performance variables such as the reliability of monitoring, fault detection, and action are expected to vary to a normal extent. The range of variation from excellent to poor is determined by physiological, psychological, and social causes. The boundaries are established by task requirements. A performance variable is classified as a deviation when its value falls outside the boundary or norm, and together with other technical deviations may lead to an accident. This may not only be valid for individual and technical factors, but also for organizational measures (Kjellen Larsson 1981). 

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