Large‐scale technological systems are complexes of humans and machines. Thus dependable systems rely on the dependability of the humans that interact with the machines (whether in design or operations). In turn, human dependability is, among other things, a function of the organizations in which the humans reside. This facet of technological systems has not escaped notice, and, in 1986, the Highly Reliable Organization (HRO) project started at the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. This body of research offers insights useful to the dependable system designer; the degree of utility, however, depends upon a clear understanding of the project's scope, what capabilities exist in the social sciences to predict institutional behavior, and a willingness to engage in cross‐disciplinary dialog.
This chapter frames HRO research from the perspective of the system designer interested in understanding the role that social science research can and should play in technical system operations. This frame is one that is not identical to what the HRO project is primarily about or how researchers involved have framed their work themselves. The collection of work produced by scholars involved in the HRO project is extraordinarily rich, diverse, and robust; this reframing is an attempt to accentuate its relevance to system designers – hopefully without doing harm to the research in its own terms. This provides engineers interested in system health management and dependability with a basic sense of what the HRO literature is about and a sense of where they can go next for more information.
Highly Reliable Organizations
System Health Management ; 49-63
2011-07-15
15 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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