Disaster prevention through a harmonized framework for high reliability organisations

Abstract

The increasing havoc wrecked by catastrophic incidents on organisations worldwide, as well as the increasing devastating effects of these incidents, has necessitated the development of a framework to improve the reliability of organisations. Despite operating in tightly coupled and complex technologies, high reliability organisations (HROs) continue to operate mindfully with minimal incidents. Given that most disasters have occurred in organisations and industries not considered as truly HROs, this paper argues that applying organisational learning from HROs across diverse organisations in different industries could potentially reduce organisational disasters. This paper recognised the numerous researches in HRO theory, but noticed the unavailability of a harmonized measurable framework that could be standardized and applied across diverse organisations. Using the HRO principles, this paper conducted a research in 8 organisations, in 3 industries across 2 continents. It developed the organisational reliability maturity model (ORM 2 ) to track the progression organisations through 5 maturity levels. It developed the framework for organisational reliability maturity (FORM) to measure maturity levels of organisations, predict potentials for disasters, benchmark, and improvement organisations. It is hoped that this paper will deepen existing research in disaster prevention and HRO theory, while opening up new areas of knowledge.

The Combined Effect of Safety Specific Transformational Leadership and Safety Consciousness on Psychological Well-Being of Healthcare Workers

“…This theory mainly focuses on complex work units in which hazards are inevitable (Wolf, 2001 ). The high reliability organizational theory states that employees working under a high reliability organization are less likely to experience physical and mental health issues (Agwu et al, 2019 ).…”

Model of Crisis Communication Management in the Perspective of Situational Crisis Communication Theory at the Transportation Ministry

“…Crisis communication management with the model of pre-crisis, crisis response and post-crisis phases has made the organization more dynamic and responsive in disaster response. This is different from the theory of high-reliability organization (HRO) which works under model of uncertain crisis or in a state of emergency, (Agwu, et al, 2019). The HRO theory gives a framework to complex organization to work reliably in uncertain condition.…”

Learning How to Learn from Disasters through a Comparative Dichotomy Analysis: Grenfell Tower and Hurricane Katrina Case Studies

“…This and many other examples show the importance of applying "common sense" or "operational discretion" in conjunction with standard operating procedures, as well as the need to understand both the ostensive and performative aspects [49,50]. Such common sense has been theorized as "mindfulness" in the literature that relates to high-reliability organisations [51] and has also been modeled as a maturity framework [52].…”