Near misses in financial trading: skills for capturing and averting error

Meghan Leaver, Alex Griffiths and Tom W. Reader

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Objective: The aims of this study were (a) to determine whether near-miss incidents in financial trading contain information on the operator skills and systems that detect and prevent near misses and the patterns and trends revealed by these data and (b) to explore if particular operator skills and systems are found as important for avoiding particular types of error on the trading floor. Background: In this study, we examine a cohort of near-miss incidents collected from a financial trading organization using the Financial Incident Analysis System and report on the nontechnical skills and systems that are used to detect and prevent error in this domain. Method: One thousand near-miss incidents are analyzed using distribution, mean, chi-square, and associative analysis to describe the data; reliability is provided. Results: Slips/lapses (52%) and human–computer interface problems (21%) often occur alone and are the main contributors to error causation, whereas the prevention of error is largely a result of teamwork (65%) and situation awareness (46%) skills. No matter the cause of error, situation awareness and teamwork skills are used most often to detect and prevent the error. Conclusion: Situation awareness and teamwork skills appear universally important as a “last line” of defense for capturing error, and data from incident-monitoring systems can be analyzed in a fashion more consistent with a “Safety-II” approach. Application: This research provides data for ameliorating risk within financial trading organizations, with implications for future risk management programs and regulation.

Keywords: accidents; human error; situation awareness; cognition; team collaboration; teams and groups; social processes; safety culture and behavior change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-05-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-rmg
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Human Factors, 9, May, 2018, 60(5), pp. 640-657. ISSN: 0018-7208

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87885/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:87885

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().