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Here is an extract from James Reason’s “Organizational Accidents Revisited” book (p103).

He discusses various “alternative views” around organisational accidents, including Barry Turner’s disaster concept, Chick Perrow and Normal Accident Theory and also the contributions from David Woods et al. around cognitive systems.

Here he’s talking about the work from Woods et al. regarding the importance of moving beyond first stories to second stories (links in comments to what first vs second stories means).

While he says he agrees with the list, he sees it more as a wish list and still influenced by post-hoc influences. In any case, you can see Jim at the tail-end of his career swinging hard to keep “error” alive.

Indeed, according to Jim, stories of incidents without the mention of error or wrong actions “is a story without a beginning – or maybe an end”.

No obscure lesson or agenda here – I just found it an interesting perspective from a research giant.

Shout me a coffee

Link to the LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benhutchinson2_here-is-an-extract-from-james-reasons-organizational-activity-7036824382723227648-JubZ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop