P2/2
Yesterday’s post covered a change initiative in an oil & gas company which happened during a company merger. Standardising work processes, practices and cultures were key initiatives. Despite the intended positive benefits of standardising, a number of perceived negative effects were also evident (see post 1).
After covering the findings pre- and post-change, the authors then spend some time discussing the findings and how to make sense of the findings. I can’t cover all of this but will pick a few things.
First, it’s said that there’s no clear answer whether standardisation is perceived as positive or negative, and involves aspects of positive & negative effects.
A fear that standardising would lead to less responsibility was founded, believed to lead to higher fragmentation of work. People felt that “they were no longer to take responsibility for entire work processes, but rather perform isolated tasks stated in work orders” (p2007). Thus it’s noted that standardising in this context may have led to a reduction in system knowledge (or a reduction in sensitivity to operations, as per HRO theory).
The use of staff rotation, while having some perceived negative effects, is also argued to potentially improve requisite variety; a key ingredient in detecting weak signals of danger.
However, it’s said that: “this increase in requisite variety is in some ways the opposite of the standardization of norms [which was an aim of standardisation] … The rotation of personnel does not reduce cultural variation, it makes the offshore crews more heterogeneous, and this seems to be the key to the positive effects experienced on the platforms” (p2008)
Further, the authors argue that this finding “illustrates that one should be very careful to aim at creating cultural consensus, which is often the case in attitude campaigns and safety culture programs” (p2008).
Also, scepticism was levelled as whether an organisation can really ever have “one common culture across installations”, since every crew & installation has its own separate practices and procedures and sub-cultures. Thus that, when “parts of the organization are literally their own islands in the middle of the sea, with limited contact with other platforms, the development of local cultures seem inevitable” (p2008).
For standardisation & improvisation – it’s argued that standardisation approaches may be effective for securing predictability in normal operations but may have adverse effects for dealing with crisis & unexpected events. As they quote in the paper, “The ability to deal with a crisis situation is largely dependent on the structures that have been developed before chaos arrives” (p2008).
This suggests that a level of improvisation is necessary in organisations for successfully “rehearsing” to unexpected variability before it arrives, and this requires a level of improvisation in normal operations to practice. Excessive and haphazard standardisation approaches may dampen the necessary skills for adapting and practicing.
However, seeing standardisation vs improvisation as opposites on a continuum is said to be misleading. Humans don’t ever purely operate in a standardised way since there will always be some adjustment and adaptation and pure improvisation would suggest that some actions are completely random (which is said to be rare). Thus, “the two concepts should be viewed as ideal types (i.e. a set of extreme characteristics against which particular cases can be compared) that are mutually dependent, rather than mutually exclusive” (p2008).
Further, organisations may operate in a standardised way in some situations, eg when things are stable, and increase improvisation in other situations, eg when things are unstable or unpredictable. The ability for organisations to masterfully switch between the modes of organising is said to be a feature of highly reliable organising.
Or as they say, “The notion of adaptive improvisation means that a pre-defined structure or standard exists, but where there is room to make local adjustments in light of emergent conditions” (p2009). The company’s approach to reduce variation via standardisation seems to be based on an assumption that human behaviour is the primary cause of accidents and reducing this variation is key.
In contrast, it’s argued that the variation in human behaviour is what is needed to manage operational anomalies which are a normal part of high-risk work.
Authors: Stian Antonsen, Kari Skarholt, Arne Jarl Ringstad, 2012, Safety Science
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2011.11.001
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/role-standardization-safety-management-case-study-major-hutchinson-1c
SafetyInsights.org 