The idea of a static organisation as a High Reliability Organisation (HRO) is a dream-myth that Safety wants to believe but it is NOT what LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts or Weick ever intended.
I think LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts and Weick would be horrified to see what safety has done to their work.
HRO theory was derived from ‘normal accident theory’ from LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts (1987) and seeks to answer why organizations working with complex and hazardous systems operated seemingly error-free. They came up with a list of common characteristics to which the organisations they researched, had in common. These are listed here:
But neither LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts or Weick understood a HRO as a static end point. The language that should have been used should have been ‘HROing’. HROing should be a process, not an end point because there is no end point. There is no organisations that finally ‘arrives’ to become a HRO.
At best, the discourse on HROing ought to be about principles (not slogans) that best help tackle risk.
The idea that one can use a guide to become a HRO (Hopkins) is fanciful nonsense. Such is a pathway to overconfidence, arrogance and cultural naivety.
These in themselves make any organisation unsafe.
This was clearly demonstrated by BP that on the day they celebrated zero for several years created one of the world’s greatest disasters killing 11 people (https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/deepwater-horizon-bp-gulf-mexico-oil-spill).
- Only safety looks for formulas for certainty, where there are none.
- Only Safety thinks perfection is possible and that an endpoint of zero is achievable.
- Only Safety thinks organisations are not comprised of fallible people using fallible systems.
This is the safety=zero delusion (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).
The principles of HROing infer a continuous process where no organisations ‘arrives’. Unfortunately, some of the principles espoused by LaPorte, Rochlin, Roberts and Weick get twisted by Safety in its quest for a final solution to the wicked problem of risk (https://www.epigroup.com.au/blog/what-makes-a-high-reliability-organisation-hro/).
For example, it is not good to be preoccupied with safety. A preoccupation with safety or hyper-safety has been demonstrated by Amalberti and Taleb (https://safetyrisk.net/the-horrors-of-hyper-safety/) as unsafe. The key to effectively tackling risk is balance, keeping safety in perspective and NOT crusading about safety.
Indeed, it’s not good to be ‘preoccupied’ with anything in any organisation. Any form of obsession in an organisation is a recipe for dysfunction. An obsession with safety is a mental illness (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-obsession-as-a-mental-illness/). Neither LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts and Weick ever argued for a preoccupation with safety.
I find it laughable that one of the principles of HROing is ‘Deference to Expertise’ but Safety never does this. It always looks inside of itself to develop knowledge in Ethics, Culture, Linguistics and host of disciplines in which it has no expertise (https://safetyrisk.net/linguistic-non-intelligence-with-safety-non-experts/).
Then we get this nonsense of Resilience Engineering (RE) that has nothing to do with persons, ethics or Socialitie, claiming that S2 overlaps with HROing is just more marketing to sell a product. RE is about systems and objects not about persons nor the ethical conduct of tackling risk. There is no correlation between HROing and RE.
There is no state of becoming a HRO (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925753520304793). There is only HROing, a method for tacking risk NOT, a type of organisation that exists in some HRO state.
One thing is for sure, if you want to inhibit HROing then anchor to zero ideology (https://www.huronconsultinggroup.com/insights/achieving-zero-harm-high-reliability-organizations). At no time or place did LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts and Weick espouse any idea of perfection or zero.
HROing comprises all of the key principles of “Collective Mindfulness’ and ‘Organisational SenseMaking’. You can understand more of this here: https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-the-social-psychology-of-risk-prof-karl-e-weick-2/ There are 13 principles in all of these two aspects of HROing and it is rare that you will see any discussion of these 13 in discussions of what it is to do HROing.
Unfortunately, in Safety, once a fad gets in, it becomes impossible to get rid of it. This has now happened to the anchoring of Safety to the idea of a HRO (and to RE and zero).
There is evidence to suggest that LaPorte, Rochlin, Roberts and Weick regretted the HRO language they used and of course no had expertise in Linguistics. And so, the language they used has enabled Safety to develop into the myth of the HRO.
The idea of reliability must always be held in tension with the realities of mortality and fallibility. All reliability concerning human activity must always be limited.
The best way to change this problem of the HRO is to change the language from HRO to HROing. Change the language from a status to a process. This is what LaPorte, Rochlin, and Roberts and Weick always intended.
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-hro/
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