What can possibly go wrong? Anticipatory work in space operations

Johansen, Jens Petter; Almklov, Petter Grytten; Mohammad, Abdul Basit

doi:10.1007/s10111-015-0357-8

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The aim is certainly to improve processes that enable collective structures to continually develop working rules that are simultaneously rules of efficiency and of safety, and are relevant to the situations actually encountered. It is not to argue that working does not require procedures or that only bottom-up procedures are valid: improvisation is also possible within procedures (Johansen et al 2016;Almklov, in this volume;Gauthereau and Hollnagel 2005). However, it is important that procedures and standards have instrumental value in the situations encountered.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Line Managers as Work Professionals in the Era of Workplace Health Professionalization

Ughetto

2017

Beyond Safety Training

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Constructing rules for work that foster both health and safety and efficient production entails, in many organisations, the introduction of procedures, tools and techniques implemented by specialists. The purpose of this is to combat the amateur practices and lack of expertise supposedly found not only amongst employees, but also in their managers. This chapter argues that, on the contrary, field managers possess knowledge about working conditions and are actors who are necessarily involved in organising those conditions as well as the work of their teams. In so doing, they protect employees from or expose them to the real and varying circumstances of work. This is the role that needs to be reinforced in order for safety rules to become a real part of work cultures and working practices. However, the forms of power in organisations increasingly limit the recognition of this expertise in the work of managers. The chapter advocates the importance of giving managers power to set situated organisational rules, instead of making these the exclusive prerogative of central management departments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Line Managers as Work Professionals in the Era of Workplace Health Professionalization

Ughetto

2017

Beyond Safety Training

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“…In the paper "What can possibly go wrong?" (Johansen et al 2015) we identify and discuss "anticipatory work": practices constituted of an entanglement of cognitive, social and technical elements involved in anticipating and proactively mitigating everything that might go wrong.…”

Section: Second Example: Anticipatory Work In Space Operationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Situated Practice and Safety as Objects of Management

Almklov

2017

Beyond Safety Training

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This chapter focuses on the relationship between representations of work (rules, procedures, models, specifications, plans) and work as a situated practice, performed by real people in always unique contexts. Empirically, it is organized around two main examples, the first one being a discussion of the compartmentalization of safety seen in shipping and the railway sector. It shows how safety, as an object of management, has become decoupled from practice, and how current discourses about safety disempower practitioners and subordinate their perspectives to more "theoretical" positions. The second is based on a study of control room operators in a space research operations setting. Here safety in the sense of avoiding harm to people is not the main concern; rather it is the reliability and robustness of an experiment on the International Space Station that is at stake. This example serves as a starting point for discussing how the research and theory on industrial safety should address the different temporalities of different work situations. It also helps to discuss the role of rules and procedures to support safety, reliability and resilience within the field of safety science. Finally, some propositions about the relationship between situated practice and the management of safety are provided: how invisible aspects of situated work might be important for safety yet hard to manage, how procedures and rules might be integrated parts of situated work as much as representations of it and how different temporalities of work situations should be included in the theorizing of safety and resilience.

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“…The study builds on Johansen et al (2016), who unpacks the intricate relationship between planning and improvisation in this context, and who also coin the term "anticipatory work" 5 to analyze the always forward-looking orientation of the operators and the distributed cognition (Hutchins and Klausen 1996) of which they are part. Notably, that article elaborates the distinctions and interconnections between the anticipatory work in planning 6 and in work conducted in the real time phase.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accountability on the Fly - Accounting for Trouble in Space Operations

Almklov

Halvorsen

Johansen

2020

Comput Supported Coop Work

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The International Space Station (ISS) is research infrastructure enabling experiments in a microgravity environment. Building on a study of one of the ground control rooms in the ISS network, this paper concentrates on low-level operators and their efforts to display accountability in situations of trouble and problem solving. While the research infrastructure around the ISS is permeated by structural (bureaucratic) approaches to accountability (routines, procedures, audits and verifications), we discuss how real-time operations require a more dynamic form of continuously (re-)established accountability in the network of operators. In time-critical situations, operators need to establish accountability 'on the fly' in order to achieve the necessary agency to operate and troubleshoot their system. One key resource for this is the established voice loop system for synchronous communication. With significant constraints on the form and content of speaking turns, operators need to provide appropriate and recognizable accounts that align with the needs and expectations of the network. Based on an extensive multi-method study, with a focus here on recordings of voice loop interactions, we show how accounts of trouble are designed to manage uncertainty in the larger network, while also positioning the operators as competent and reliable members of the network. Conversely, inadequate accounts create uncertainty and delayed resolution of the issue. The design of accounts on the voice loop is crucial for time-critical articulation work in a distributed collaborative setting. The interactional details on the voice loop provide insights into the production and display of accountability, particularly relevant in networked organizations in which personal relations and trust can only play a marginal role and in which temporal constraints are critical. While the research literature has explored a wide variety of dimensions related to coordination and improvisation in distributed, mediated work environments, this study contributes with insights into the functions of verbal accounts in such contexts and how they may serve to supplement formal systems of accountability.7 See the discussion of anticipation in Patterson et al. (1999) and Rosness et al. (2016) prospective sensemaking for other takes on this. 8 The seamless way that anticipation and remediating measures for possible problems are distributed among hardware, software, scripts, procedures and training is the reason we stress that anticipatory work is sociotechnical, and that it goes far beyond anticipation as a cognitive process.

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What can possibly go wrong? Anticipatory work in space operations

Cited by 13 publications

References 20 publications

Line Managers as Work Professionals in the Era of Workplace Health Professionalization

Line Managers as Work Professionals in the Era of Workplace Health Professionalization

Situated Practice and Safety as Objects of Management

Accountability on the Fly - Accounting for Trouble in Space Operations

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