Andrew Hopkins in this article defends Reason’s Swiss Cheese Metaphor (SCM) from critiques from both Nancy Leveson and Sid Dekker. Just a few extracts. [** Be on the lookout for next week’s compendium dedicated to Hopkins & Hale] I’m taking no sides – just reporting what’s in the paper: · He selects criticisms of Reason’s work… Continue reading Leveson and Dekker on Reason: How the Critics Got the Swiss Cheese Model Wrong – Andrew Hopkins
Tag: sidney dekker
The Pursuit of Success & Averting Drift into Failure – YT vid from Sidney Dekker
Here’s a 30 min YT presso from Sid Dekker on complex system failures and drift. Some extracts: · “this fascination with counting and tabulating little negative events, as if they are predictive of a big bad event over the horizon, is an illusion” · “We should be doing something quite different if we want to understand how your complex system… Continue reading The Pursuit of Success & Averting Drift into Failure – YT vid from Sidney Dekker
Complex systems and drifting into failure – further extracts from Dekker 2013
More extracts from Dekker’s 2013 paper ‘Drifting into failure’. These parts focus on some properties of complex systems (image 1), and how systems drift to failure (image 2). Extracts:· “Open systems mean that it can be quite difficult to define the border of a system. What belongs to the system, and what doesn’t? This is known… Continue reading Complex systems and drifting into failure – further extracts from Dekker 2013
Drifting into failure: Complexity theory and the management of risk
2013 paper from Dekker discussing drift into failure. Nothing new if you’ve read his 2011 book. Extracts: · “organizations do not just fail because of component breakage or linear propagations of breakdowns. Instead, failure breeds opportunistically, non-randomly, among the very structures designed to protect an organization from disaster” · “A common pattern seems to be a drift… Continue reading Drifting into failure: Complexity theory and the management of risk
The systems approach to medicine: controversy and misconceptions — Dekker & Leveson
This was a really brief discussion paper from Dekker and Leveson, covering systems thinking in medicine. Three parts – see comments. Nothing new for most, but they cover: · “The ‘systems approach’ to patient safety has recently led to questions about its ethics and practical utility” · E.g. A recent paper from a retired neurosurgeon questioned systems… Continue reading The systems approach to medicine: controversy and misconceptions — Dekker & Leveson
Examining the asymptote in safety progress: A literature review
This paper is highly recommended. I can’t do it justice as it covers a lot of material, but the authors argue that a range of safety practices and beliefs are linked to a plateau in safety performance improvements. Practices associated with compliance, control and quantification could be, at least partially, responsible for this inability to… Continue reading Examining the asymptote in safety progress: A literature review
SafetyInsights.org 