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New challenges in organizational research: high reliability organizations
Abstract
This paper describes a multidisciplinary project concerned with the design and management of hazardous organizations that achieve extremely high lev els of reliable and safe operations. The organizations in which the research is being conducted are the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control system, Pacific Gas and Electric Company's electrical distribution system, and two nuclear aircraft carriers of the United States Navy. The paper describes the research strategy and then presents some initial organizational paradoxes and findings. These are discussed in terms of describing the organizations, decision making, interdependence, the "culture" of high reliability and adaptation to technological change. The paper concludes with the admonition that managers in hazardous organizations should consider the cost of safeguards against or ganizational catastrophes versus the costs of catastrophe (in money, lives and public outcry).
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“Previous research in high-reliability organizations has shown that well-defined design principles can prevent such failures [50, 51].”
From Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail? (2025) · cites this paper as [50]
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Research works printed but not linked: 39
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail?
Cemri, M., Pan, M. Z., Yang, S., Agrawal, L. A., Chopra, B., Tiwari, R., Keutzer, K., Parameswaran, A., Klein, D., Ramchandran, K., et al. (2025) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.13657 · Cited by 630
“Previous research in high-reliability organizations has shown that well-defined design principles can prevent such failures [37, 38].”
What Could Safety Research Contribute to Technology Design?
Hallamaa, J. (2021) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-77431-8_4 · Cited by 7
Metadata
- Authors
- Roberts, K. H.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Roberts, Karlene H.
- Venue
- Industrial Crisis Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1989-06
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 111-125
- ISSN
- 0921-8106 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2063843246
- Cited by
- 218
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 7.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Industrial Crisis Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Occupational Health and Safety Research
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality › Risk and Safety Analysis
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management Theory and Practice
- Keywords
- high reliability organizations, organizational safety, organizational paradox, organizational culture, decision-making, interdependence, safeguards, air traffic control, electrical distribution systems, Federal Aviation Administration, Pacific Gas and Electric Company
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