A risk perspective supporting organizational efforts for achieving high reliability

Jahon Khorsandi and Terje Aven

Journal of Risk Research, 2014, vol. 17, issue 7, 871-884

Abstract: Many industries and organizations are actively searching for approaches that can help them enhance the reliability of their operations and avoid mishaps. The concept of high reliability organizations (HROs) has been given considerable attention in this regard. HRO theorists have emphasized the process of mindfulness as a characteristic that allows for better interaction with risk and uncertainty, in order to minimize the potential for failures. From a risk management perspective however, it is not straightforward how to best proceed to obtain a mindful infrastructure which enables such capabilities. Various perspectives on risk and uncertainties exist, which call for different approaches and solutions. A key question studied in this paper is to what extent are traditional risk perspectives based on probability and historical data limited in their ability to support an HRO mindset for managing risk. The main purpose of the paper is to draw attention to an alternative risk perspective that replaces probability with uncertainty in the definition of risk, and to show how such a risk perspective can better support the implementation of HRO theory than the more traditional perspectives. We discuss the implications of such a shift in thinking - from focusing on probabilities to the broader domain of uncertainties regarding risk - for organizations that are seeking to improve their risk management capabilities and enhance the reliability of their operations.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2013.822912 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jriskr:v:17:y:2014:i:7:p:871-884

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2013.822912

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().