Psychological Aspects of Risk Management and Technology – Overview

1. Psychological Aspects of Risk Management and Technology – Overview

2. Management of uncertainty(Grote, 2004, 2009)

3. Management of uncertainty(Grote, 2004, 2009) • Coordination via • - technical systems • - standards/programs • personal instruction • Effective with few uncertainties • Coordination via • - plans • mutual agreement • culture • Effective with many uncertainties

4. The concept of organizational routines • Organizational routines are "repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent actions, carried out by multiple actors" (Feldman & Pentland, 2003, p. 95) • Three functions of routines (Nelson & Winter, 1982) • targets for behavior, thereby keeping behavior under control; • organizational memory of the knowledge needed for successful task performance; • truce between conflicting interests of different participants in the organization.

5. Example of functions of rules in railway operations (Weichbrodt & Grote, 2009)

6. Organizational routines versus organizational flexibility (1) • Routines as crucial for coordinated action because they reduce complexity and uncertainty and increase stability, managerial control, and legitimacy. • Routines can be standard operating procedures, techno-logy-based processes, shared tacit understanding etc. • Routines contain the duality of principle and practice, with practice always introducing an element of flexible adaptation; degree of flexibility depends on embedded-ness of routine, power of rule user etc. (Feldman & Pentland, 2003) • Rules have differential effects on different outcomes, e.g. efficiency versus customer satisfaction (Gilson et al., 2005) • Rules may impede the forming of an individual action plan and thereby further atomization of actions (Vermersch, 1985)

7. Organizational routines versus organizational flexibility (2) • Rules create expectation of shared goals, plans, perspectives, knowledge base etc. for individual actors. • Risk of not realizing need for explicit coordination, e.g. in non-routine situations which require switches to higher levels of common action regulation (i.e. skill -> rule -> knowledge). • How to achieve flexible guidance for coordinated action through rules ? • Instead of focusing on the issue of many vs. few rules / high vs. low standardization, different types of rules need to be defined and their effects studied

8. The relationship between routines and rules Routine in principle Abstract under-standing of certain recurrent behavior pattern Routine in practiceActual recurrent behavior pattern guide express create inform describe establish Rule Artefact containing a written-down formal description of certain behavior pattern

9. Rule types (Hale & Swuste, 1998) • Rules concerning goals to be achieved (goal rules) "It must be clearly understood that not all combinations of cumulative opera-tional problems (engine failure plus e.g. terrain, weather, availability of aerodroms etc.) can be covered by this policy. In such situations the solution offering the highest degree of safety should be sought." • Rules defining the way in which decisions about a course of action must be arrived at (process rules)"In order to complete a replan-ning, any documented cruise systems and all means available may be used, such as flight management systems and data contained in the respective AOMs." • Rules defining concrete actions (action rules) "Every evacuation must be carried out as quickly as possible. The passengers must be assisted to leave the aeroplane without their belongings and directed to a point at a safe distance from the aeroplane."

10. Rule types - continued (Hale & Swuste, 1998) • Level of action regulation: • Goal rules • Process rules • Action rules • Obligation (Advice vs. command) • Decision latitude (with vs. without decision latitude) • Distribution of responsibility (Responsible person(s) mentioned vs. not mentioned) • Exceptions (with vs. without exceptions) • Reasons (with vs. without reasons)

11. Results of rules analysis in railway operations

12. Issues emerging from rules analysis for railway operations • More goal rules to support priority setting? • More process rules to support orientation without restricting action and adaptive coordination? • More decision latitude for shunting operations than for moving trains: adequate for actor groups vs. optimizing efforts for rule design? • More distribution of responsibilites: danger of overreduction of redundancies and insufficient match between distribution of uncertainties and resources for coping with uncertainties? • 1/5 to 1/4 exceptions as support vs. as unnecessary increase in complexity?

13. Exercise • Analyze the TCAS rules from the Swissair flight operations manual. • Discuss your findings regarding the usefulness of the rules as they are. • If needed, suggest improvements.

14. Good rule ? Example from a flight operations manual regarding use of TCAS

15. Rule management process (Hale, Heijer & Koornneef, 2003)

16. Interplay between different coordination mecha-nisms: Adaptive coordination in the cockpit • r=.37 between performance and explicit coordination overall • Good teams used more leadership in phase 2 and less in phases 1 and 3 • Good teams had first officers using less implicit coordination.

17. Elements of good rules management • Determine desired balance between stability and flexibility • Systematic decisions about types of rules • Process and goal rules promote flexibility, action rules promote stability • Matching competence levels by rule followers and decision latitude in rules • Systematic procedures for developing rules • Participative rule-making • Systematic choices between rules and other coordination mechanisms such as leadership