High Reliability Organizations

Abstract

High reliability organizations (HROs) consistently operate relatively error‐free in high‐risk, fast‐paced, highly equivocal complex environments. Central to the enactment of high reliability is the communal versus individual nature of five heedful, or cognitive, processes, coined as collective mind. While applied broadly to organizations in high‐risk environments demanding safe collective activity, HROs and collective mind are applied more specifically to healthcare organizations and the high‐performing teams within them. Of interest is how HROs communicatively constitute safety cultures, coordinate through teamwork, learn, and navigate contradictions between tightly coupled formalized rules and hierarchies and the need for loosely coupled responses to hazards.