High Reliability Organizations Essay -- Safety, Security, Hazard

In recent years, many organizations particularly in a high risk industry have experienced significant losses. For this reason, they have been more considered the importance of the concept 'High Reliability Organization' (HROs). Weick and Sutcliffe (2001) as cited in Takagi and Nakanishi (2006), claim that a comprehending of the HRO concept can lead to clearly understand a technical system within an organization. This leads to minimize any failures from unexpected circumstances. To be more precise, it can be said that the HRO principle assists the organization to determine the risk factors that may negatively affect a company performance in an early stage of a project life cycle. Similarly, Laporte and Consolini (1991) as cited in Aase and Tjensvoll (n.d.) state that any high risk organizations who has applied the HROs principles tend to have an outstanding safety records. This essay will first provide a general overview of HROs concept and then identify five characteristics of mindfulness which are consistently recognized as the aspect of HROs. In the second section, it will introduce the 'Normal Accident Theory' (NAT) by Charles Perrow. Finally, it will highlight the recommendations in improving the current emergency practice to be more effective. Perrow (1986) as cited in Aase and Tjensvoll (n.d.) notes that one of the most important characteristics of HRO is to avoid hazardous operational breakdown. In addition, the impact of such failures can be considered as 'catastrophe' resulting in there are 'complex interactions, highly interdependent technologies and 'tight coupling' within an internal system. Moreover, Weick and Consolini (n.d.) as cited in Haudt, et.al., (n.d.) state that there are five characterist... ...ial approaches which are Normal Accident and HROs, although it seems certain that both of them tends to limit the progression that can contribute toward achieving to highly protective systems. This is because the scope of the problems is too narrow and the potential of the solutions is too limited as well. Hence, Laporte and Consolini et.al., (1991) as cited in Marais, et.al., (2004) conclude that the most interesting feature of the high reliability organization is to prioritize both performance and security by the managerial oversight. In addition, the goal agreement must be an official announcement. In essence, it is recommended that there is a continuing need in the high risk organizations for more awareness of developing security system and high reliability environment in order to gain highly successful method to lower risk in an advance technology system.