Tom McDaniel‘s post yesterday about safety narratives reminded me a little of safety archetypes.
Safety archetypes are models, patterns or universally recognisable ideas that can be found in organisations. They can be applied to normal or successful work, or for failures. Not surprisingly, the latter has been studied a lot.
This study explored system archetypes in major organisational failures, drawing on Leveson’s STAMP technique and systems dynamics.
The author explored, in particular, organisational dynamics that lead to an erosion of defences, and a drift out of safety margins.
WAY too much to cover, so just a few excerpts.
Image below highlights different control flaws found among major accidents. Control here is used as per control theory, where system constraints are enforced across hierarchical levels.
The author expands on the items in the table; I’ve added some extracts around mental models and information dynamics.
The final image covers a systems dynamics model highlighting how an illusion of safety can come about.
The full paper is available via comment links and is worth a read.
Ref: Kontogiannis, T. (2012). Modeling patterns of breakdown (or archetypes) of human and organizational processes in accidents using system dynamics. Safety science, 50(4), 931-944.
SafetyInsights.org 
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