Resilience in Everyday Operations

Abstract

Managing complexity and uncertainty in high-risk sociotechnical systems requires people to continuously adapt. Designing resilient systems that support adaptive behavior requires a deepened understanding of the context in which adaptations take place, of conditions and enablers to implement these adaptations, and of their effects on the overall system. Also, it requires a focus on how people actually perform, not how they are presumed to perform according to textbook situations. In this paper, a framework to analyze adaptive behavior in everyday situations in which systems are working near the margins of safety is presented. Further, the variety space diagram has been developed as a means to illustrate how system variability, disturbances, and constraints affect work performance. The examples that underlie the framework and the diagram are derived from nine focus groups with representatives working with safety-related issues in different work domains, including health care, nuclear power, transportation, and emergency services.

Team reflection makes resilience-related knowledge explicit through collaborative sensemaking: observation study at a rail post

“…The aim of the global content analysis is to show the relation of the discussion topics to resilience. In the introduction, we explained our assumption that reflection on system movements to and from system boundaries, with their margins (Rankin et al 2013), will evoke resilience-related topics. This follows from the definition of resilience as the ability to adapt and anticipate to changes around system boundaries (Woods 2011).…”

Medication administration in nursing homes: A qualitative study of the nurse role

“…Human Factors focus on the interaction of the elements in the sociotechnical work system and how people perform processes in this system (Carayon et al, 2006). Workarounds and adaptations are often described as "filling in the gaps" to cover for design flaws or internal or external pressure and complexity (Rankin, Lundberg, Woltjer, Rollenhagen, & Hollnagel, 2014). The main categories in the current study describe role compensation, flexibility and adaptability as crucial when describing the nurse role in medication administration.…”

“…In terms of resilience, this resembles the terms work-as-done (WAD) and work-as-imagined (WAI; Braithwaite et al, 2016). Human Factors theory often uses the analogues "blunt end" and "sharp end" to encapsulate much of the same meaning (Rankin et al, 2014;Reason, 2000). In the current F I G U R E 1 The balancing act of safe medication administration study, the nurse managers of both nursing homes "imagined" how the wards should be run (WAI), something that not always translated to how it was actually done (WAD).…”

Sensemaking and resilience in safety-critical situations: A literature review

“…Some describe sensemaking as a more cognitive process and refer to Klein's macro-cognitive/dataframe model (Hoffman & Hancock, 2017;Siegel & Schraagen, 2017), whereas others refer to the work of both Weick & Klein (e.g. Landman et al, 2017;Norros et al, 2014;Rankin et al 2014).…”

“…Takeda et al (2017) conclude that future research is needed to further understand resilience and sensemaking. Rankin (2013) draws lines between Hollnagel's four central abilities to characterise a resilient system and the sensemaking capabilities of seeking information, ascribing meaning and action as described by Grøtan et al (2008). In a paper from the same year, Rankin and her co-workers present a framework for analysing adaptations in high-risk work (Rankin et al, 2014).…”