Monitoring Dangers in an Uncertain World

该项目研究组织如何收集有关事故的信息并从中学习，这些事故在稍微不同的情况下可能导致事故。 组织监测这些潜在的危险，以了解如何科普危险，即，低概率高负面后果的事件 在这项研究中，比较了近事故监测系统在医疗设备，核电，航天飞机和航空运输行业的运作。 具体来说，这项研究是基于对各种安全信息系统的主要参与者的访谈分析，以及航空运输业以前的研究中生成的报告。 拟议的研究借鉴并寻求有助于风险管理，信息处理和组织学习的研究。 此外，它对其他风险事件领域的组织管理具有更广泛的影响，例如在全球环境变化下可能变得更加频繁或不可预测的极端天气事件。 这些项目的目的是查明限制（或加强）组织能力的因素，以收集关于即将发生的事故（或即将发生的灾害）的信息并从中吸取教训。 重点是三个主要的研究问题：1）安全信息系统的组织如何影响体积（例如，可靠性）和内容（例如，收集的信息的有效性和从近事故信息中学习的组织能力？2)随着时间的推移，与注意力相关的因素在多大程度上影响了近事故报告的数量？3）组织如何从未遂事故中吸取教训？ 针对这些主要研究问题中的每一个都制定了具体的研究问题。为了说明，第一个研究问题包括对未遂事故的定义和解释的讨论，其中考虑了脆弱性与鲁棒性、学习与控制行为以及模糊与明确定义的维度。 这项研究将有助于解决这样的政策问题：如果一个组织收集信息的目的是控制行为，它是否减少了近事故报告的数量，并增加了自利偏见，扭曲了潜在危险的帐户？

This project is a study of how organizations collect information about and learn from near accidents, events which under slightly different circumstances could have resulted in an accident. Organizations monitor these potential dangers to learn how to cope with dangers, i.e., low probability, high negative consequence events. In this research, a comparison is made to how near accident monitoring systems operate in the medical device, nuclear power, space shuttle, and air transportation industries. Specifically, the research is based on an analysis of interviews with key participants in a variety of safety information systems, and reports generated within previous studies in the air transportation industry. The proposed research draws on and seeks to contribute to the study of risk management, information processing, and organizational learning. Additionally, it has broader implications for organizational management of other areas of risky events, such as the extreme weather events that may become more frequent or unpredictable under global environmental change. The purpose of the projects is to identify factors which constrain (or enhance) the organizational capacity to collect information about and learn from near accidents (or near disasters). The focus is on three main research questions: 1) How does the organization of safety information systems affect the volume (e.g., reliability) and contents (e.g., validity) of information collected and the organizational capacity to learn from near accident information? 2) To what extent do attention-related factors affect the volume of near accident reporting over time? and 3) How do organizations learn from near accidents? Specific research questions are developed for each of these main research questions. To illustrate, the first research question includes a discussion of the definition and interpretation of near accidents in which the dimensions of vulnerability vs. robustness, learning vs. controlling behavior, and ambiguous vs. clearly -defined definitions are considered. The research will help address such policy questions as: If an organization collects information for purposes of controlling behavior, does it lessen the amount of near accident reporting and increase the self-interested bias that distorts accounts of potential dangers?