Mini-post: Changing the human condition vs the conditions that people work under

You don’t need to buy into the adaptive views (S-II, resilience engineering etc.) to be more critical about how easily the term “human error” can be corrupted to a simplistic focus on people, at the expense of effective higher-order organisational design and improvements.

The below are generalities and not universal truths, of course. But, I think the right-side column conveys some important messages (from Dekker, 2014, The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error, xvi).

One message is that, as James Reason aptly puts it:

“We cannot change the human condition, but we can change the conditions under which people work”.

Decades of human factors research supports this message.

[**Note: I’m not sharing this to fuel the trite “old” vs “new” view or S-I vs S-II debates, but rather the focus on designing more human-centred approaches.]

Link to the LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benhutchinson2_you-dont-need-to-buy-into-the-adaptive-views-activity-6849448240522387456-HbE8?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop