This paper reviews the literature on resilience engineering as a safety management approach. Preferred Reporting Items for Reporting Systematic Reviews guidelines were used to search, select and evaluate 46 published works. The terms organisational resilience and resilience engineering are clarified, and functionalist and interpretive research frameworks used to analyze articles. This review suggests there is no universally agreed definition of resilience engineering; but it involves a collective aspect, is multifactorial, multilevel and multidimensional; associated with four key principles (anticipation, response, learning and monitoring) and successful outcomes. The gap between work as imagined and work as performed is an important aspect. Studies on resilience engineering have predominantly involved qualitative investigations; with data collected through site observations, safety audits and surveys. Eight research gaps were identified, and suggestions made on how these gaps can be addressed through empirical research.
Effective management of safety is an integral part of organisation’s risk management throughout the world. This is because more than 2.7 million workers die from work-related accidents and diseases, over 374 million people suffer from non-fatal accidents and injuries [
1) safety laws, standards, procedures and rules,
2) human error and behavioural control initiatives,
3) designing for safety initiatives,
4) improvements in physical working conditions,
5) safety management systems,
6) safety culture,
7) organisational learning and high-reliability organisations.
Conceptually, the above approaches have been suggested to have evolved over five ages [
RE was introduced in the safety domain in 2003 as an alternative to explaining how organisational disasters such as Challenger and Columbia occurred repeatedly. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated upon entry to earth, killing all seven crew members. The first report of this disaster, released by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003, identified three main factors, which preceded the disaster. These included i) physical failures which led directly to Columbia’s destruction, ii) underlying weaknesses in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) organization’s and history that paved the way for catastrophic failure, and iii) other significant observations unrelated to the accident itself [
1) a drift towards failure as defenses eroded under pressures of production,
2) organizations taking past success as a sign of confidence, instead of investing in efforts at future potentials of failure,
3) using a fragmented and distributed problem-solving process which clouded the bigger picture about risks and their effective management,
4) an inability to revise and manage risk assessments as new evidence emerged, and
5) breakdowns at the boundaries of organizational units, which impeded communication and coordination.
RE was developed as a solution for overcoming these, and similar concerns, in organisations operating in similar organizational contexts as NASA. Since being introduced RE is gaining momentum, with research published mostly from aviation, healthcare, nuclear power plants, petrochemical facilities; with some from electricity distribution, manufacturing, railways and construction [
However, there are a number of fundamental problems with RE, including the lack of a universally accepted definition of organisational resilience (OR) or of RE, both of which have been used interchangeably in the literature [
The aim of the present paper is to develop a research framework for future studies of RE as a safety management strategy. To achieve the aim three research objectives were proposed:
1) Establish a common understanding of RE through an integrative review,
2) Explore how RE has been operationalized and researched, and
3) Develop a future research agenda for investigating RE.
This research method used included an integrative review. Such review analyzes and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated [
The specific method used included an adaptation of the recommended guidelines for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) [
The initial search resulted in 103 articles after duplicates were removed. This included four books [
review. While this is not an exhaustive list of all articles, they provide a representative overview of what has been published on the topic.
The next section examines the definitions used to explain RE. Because the published works referred to OR constantly, no review of RE can be considered complete without a summary of those aspects of OR that have been suggested to play an important role [
There is no common understanding of OR, fifteen definitions extracted from the articles reviewed are summarised in
The most common theme from the above definitions of OR is an ability to cope with adverse circumstances, disasters and disturbances. This is reflected in the key ideas such as recovery [
However, there appear to be two things that set resilient organisations apart from CAS.
The first is their ability to continue performing well without being affected significantly during a catastrophe or disaster; the fact they “operate smoothly even in difficult situations” [
The second is their ability to deal effectively with more than normal, every-day threats and disturbances. This involves going beyond past experiences and being prepared to deal effectively with unknown events, threats, and/or “unexampled hazards” [
Author(s) | Definitions |
---|---|
Mallak [ | “the ability of an individual or organization to expeditiously design and implement positive adaptive behaviours matched to the immediate situation, while enduring minimum stress” |
Hale and Heijer [ | “the characteristic of managing the organisation’s activities to anticipate and circumvent threats to its existence and primary goals” |
McDonald [ | “the capacity (of an organisational system) to anticipate and manage risk effectively, through adaptation of its actions, systems and processes, so as to ensure its core functions are carried out in a stable and effective relationship with the environment” |
Westrum [ | “the ability to prevent something bad from happening, or the ability to prevent something bad from becoming worse, or the ability to recover from something bad once it has happened” |
Woods [ | “the art of managing the unexpected, or how a team or organization becomes prepared to cope with surprises” |
Wreathall [ | “the ability of an organisation (system) to keep, or recover quickly to, a stable state, allowing it to continue operations during and after a major mishap or in the presence of continuous significant stresses” |
Patterson, et al. [ | “the ability to adapt or absorb disturbances, disruption, and change” |
Vogus and Sutcliffe [ | “the maintenance of positive adjustment under challenging conditions such that the organization emerges from those conditions strengthened and more resourceful” |
Bracco, et al. [ | “emergent property of a complex system and comes from the joint interaction of a structure, its functions and an environment where they can take place” |
Epstein [ | “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress… for general usage it can be defined as the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” |
Grote [ | “the ability of the organization to handle unanticipated uncertainties that arise from changes in the environment and/or because the textbook envelop is incomplete, limited or wrong” |
Stephenson, et al. [ | “the ability of an organisation to survive, and potentially thrive in an environment of change and uncertainty” |
Haimes [ | “the ability of a system to withstand a major disruption within an acceptable degradation parameters and to recover within an acceptable time and composite costs and risks” |
Hollnagel [ | “(a resilient system) is able effectively to adjust it functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can continue to perform as required after a disruption or a major mishap, and in the presence of continuous stresses” |
Malakis and Kontogiannis [ | “the ability of a system to adapt or absorb disturbances, disruptions and changes, especially those that fall outside the textbook operation envelop” |
Similar to OR, there is no single accepted definition of; examples of ten definitions are summarised in
Three of the definitions suggest it is a new paradigm of safety management, which specifically focuses how people cope with complexity under pressure [
Author(s) | Definitions |
---|---|
Woods and Hollnagel [ | “a paradigm [emphasis added] of safety management that focuses on how to help people cope with complexity under pressure to achieve success” |
Chialastri and Pozzi [ | “the broader definition of adaptation, whether the system can handle variations that fall outside the design envelop” |
Costella, et al. [ | “a paradigm [emphasis added] of safety management that focuses on how to help people cope with complexity under pressure to achieve success” |
Dekker, et al. [ | “a way of thinking about safety that departs from conventional risk management approaches …” |
Komatsubara [ | Resilience engineering is the human factors approach for minimizing damages to a system arising from an unexpected situation, and restoring it promptly to its original state through human performance and teamwork |
Mendonça [ | “monitoring and managing performance at the boundaries of competence under changing demands” |
Schafer, et al. [ | “the intrinsic ability of a system or an organization to adjust its functioning prior to and/or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain operations even after a major mishap or in the presence of continuous stress” |
Han, et al. [ | “a proactive management approach that allows future risk to be anticipated and the safety level in an organization to be maintained, based on perceptions of current and changing safety levels and recognition of acceptable limits” |
Pillay, et al. [ | “developing an organisation’s behavioural and cognitive capability such that it is able to effectively adjust and continue performing optimally near its safe operating envelop in the presence of everyday threats and environmental stressors at all levels of the organisation” |
Shirali, et al. [ | “inherent capacity of a plant to cope with complex and unexpected events” |
Shirali, et al. [ | “a paradigm [emphasis added] for safety management that concentrates on how to help people to create foresight, and to anticipate the different forms of risk in order to cope with complexities under pressure and move towards success” |
reference to complexity suggests RE is associated with systems, elements, interactions and emergence [
A second definition suggests it involves adaptation from disturbances, changes, major mishaps [
“(RE) looks for ways to enhance the ability of organizations to monitor and revise risk modes…create processes that are robust yet flexible, and… use resources proactively in the face of disruptions or ongoing production and economic pressures” [
In conventional risk management suggested by Dekker, et al. [
The fifth definition suggests it is an approach for minimising damages to systems arising from uncertain events; this is similar to the seventh which suggests it is a proactive approach to risk management, by anticipating of future risks and maintenance of safety. Risk management itself involves a process [
The sixth definition suggest it is an ability of a system or organization, and therefore is the same as OR.
The eighth definition suggests it is a process of development, associated with everyday operations, can be decomposed at cognitive and behavioural dimensions, and present at all levels. This suggests that RE is multi-dimensional and multifactorial, associated with processes and can be examined, explored, investigated, assessed and/or measured in normal, everyday work settings; and decomposed at cognitive and behavioural levels. This is somewhat different to the next definition by Shirali, et al. [
The above examination suggests that a clear formulation of RE is lacking, and it is still in the “midst of defining itself” [
In seeking to address the relationship between knowledge, theory and research, Burrell and Morgan [
Thirteen papers were published from a perspective, these are summarised in
While these studies continue to add to the body of knowledge of RE, they have their limitations. In part, this is based on the assumptions that are inherent in the functionalist perspective, which assumes that society has a concrete existence, follows certain order, and the existence of an objective and value-free social science which can produce true explanatory and predictive knowledge [
Author(s) | Summary of research |
---|---|
Carthey, et al. [ | Proposed a 20-item checklist for assessing institutional resilience (CAIR) for healthcare organisations. |
Wood, et al. [ | Used a customized version of CAIR [ |
Wreathall [ | Derived a set of factors that could be used for measuring and/or exploring RE based on previous work on leading indicators of organisational health (LIOH). |
Back, et al. [ | Introduced cognitive resilience as a behavioural ability, utilised the notion of reflection-in-action (RIA) and reflection-on-action (ROA) and a repetitions-distinctions-descriptions model [ |
Akselsson, et al. [ | Conducted a RE audit to examine “holes in safety culture” in the European Aviation industry. |
Costella, et al. [ | Proposed a new method for assessing safety management systems from an RE perspective and conducted a RE audit at a Brazilian manufacturing company. |
Huber, et al. [ | Conducted a RE audit in a chemical company using a set of dimensions suggested by Wreathall [ |
Jeffcott, et al. [ | Introduced RE as a concept and suggested how these could be used to enhance patient safety during handover. |
Øien, et al. [ | Discussed a new method for developing early warning indicators based on RE principles suggested by Wreathall [ |
Pillay, et al. [ | Proposed a six-factor questionnaire based on managerial resilience [ |
Saurin and Carim Júnior [ | Presented a framework for evaluating OHS management systems based on method previously develop by Costella, et al. [ |
Grecco, et al. [ | Proposed a method for assessing safety and resilience based on the key indicators suggested by Wreathall [ |
Shirali, et al. [ | Conducted a survey of RE using safety culture and management factors. |
Many of the indicators used in some these studies appear to be inconsistent with the basic tenets of RE, including the understanding that resilience can be measured and/or quantified through tabulations of errors, behavioural and/or other factors [
There are also limitations with the two main methods used in the studies above, safety audits and surveys.
Safety audits are widely used in safety practice, and have been used in three studies. A common shortfall with audits is that it limits the inquiry to those elements identified in the audit tool [
Surveys collect data through a series of standardised questions based on a number of psychometric indicators. Many of the aspects included in these studies have also been associated with safety culture, which itself has been suggested to be ill-defined and largely misunderstood [
The quantitative results of surveys and audits are generally relied upon as measures of safety performance in many organisations. High results would generally be treated as better performers; hence the scientific merits of the data produced from both surveys and audits have an important bearing on organisational decision-making. However a systematic review on content validity of audits suggests there has been little research in this area [
Both audits and surveys provide a snapshot of selected aspects of RE using a selected set of indicators and factors. This can be useful for diagnosing an organisation’s potential for RE. However, in order to be more useful in safety practice, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the key interactions that occur among or between those factors, the influence of these factors and whether these hinder or enhance RE for safety management.
In contrast to the functionalists, the interpretive perspective seeks to understand the world as it exists [
Empirical studies included those published from industries such as healthcare [
Author(s) | Summary of Research |
---|---|
Woods [ | Discussed five general patterns of organisational behaviour that were apparent in the Columbia space shuttle disaster and, identified four properties which could be used to enhance RE in organisations. |
Abech, et al. [ | Investigated resilience in a Fuel distribution plant, focusing on its ability to adapt and manage goal conflicts, through the gap between work as imagined and as practiced. |
Carvalho, et al. [ | Investigated the ability of nuclear power plant operators to deal with procedures, rules and norms amidst organisational constraints in order to understand whether i) following procedures always constituted best practice, ii) violations of NPP procedures improved safety, and iii) skills operators needed to optimize performance. |
Chevreau [ | Suggested a managerial approach for safety culture which took into account RE, and argued there was no need for RE as this was already included in safety culture. |
Cook and Nemeth [ | Explored resilience in the healthcare industry through observations of ‘soft emergency’ at an anaesthesia department and at a major hospital. |
Da Mata, et al. [ | Investigated disturbances which affected offshore helicopter transportation and how the system adapted to unforeseen events, and coped with multiple pressures, goal conflicts and dilemmas. |
Dekker [ | Reviewed key themes presented at the 1st Symposium on RE, identified the distance (gap) between work as imagined and work as performed as an important marker for RE. |
Dijkstra [ | Presented a case of how RE principles were integrated into Safety management systems in the Airline industry |
Flin [ | Decomposed RE at behavioural level, introduced managerial resilience, and suggested how these could be investigated empirically. |
Nathanael and Marmaras [ | Proposes a model explaining the interplay between prescription and practice of work, which could be used to explain flexibility in operations. |
Woods [ | Presented some basic concepts related to RE and adaptive capacity, and argued safety culture and learning from accidents were essential aspects. |
Woods [ | Proposed a number of factors and dimensions for monitoring resilience (balancing acute and chronic goals, sacrificial judgments. |
Patterson, et al. [ | Investigated whether collaborative cross-checking enhanced resilience of healthcare settings. |
Antonsen, et al. [ | Investigated the conditions which facilitated operators to balance work as designed (in formal procedures) versus actual conduct of work (operations) through a change process. |
Back, et al. [ | Decomposed RE at five levels of granularity (individual, small team, operational, plant and industry) and explained how these could be investigated in nuclear power plants. |
Carvalho, et al. [ | Presented a framework for analysing micro accidents as an opportunity for examining sacrificial decision-making in nuclear power plants. |
Herrera and Hovden [ | Explored leading indicators and their reasons, as a basis for looking forward and monitoring safety performance |
Le Coze and Pettersen [ | Explored whether RE was a realist or constructivist approach to safety, argued that both were useful for applied research. |
Mendonça [ | Explored interpretive and positivist approaches to assessing RE, argued that combining the two was a way of advancing research, and applied this to investigate key abilities in two case studies. |
Sheridan [ | Reviewed error/risk analysis and RE, argued that RE complemented traditional risk analysis but needed to include quantification. |
Boring [ | Reviewed human reliability assessment and RE and suggested ways in which these can be integrated to enhance organisational performance. |
Madni and Jackson [ | Reviewed resilience from multiple perspectives, provided a conceptual framework for understanding and analysing disruptions, and presented a number of principles that could be used to build resilient systems. |
---|---|
Schafer, et al. [ | Reviewed origins and concepts of RE, made propositions for implementing RE through lean manufacturing principles in the construction industry. |
Branlat and Woods [ | Discuss resilient behaviours exhibited by expert practitioners in high-risk situations, and how complex adaptive systems can be developed to improve system resilience. |
Han, et al. [ | Investigated how organisations perceived change in safety culture and restored it to an acceptable state using a RE perspective, proposed a model of safety management based on interactions between workers, managers and organisation in construction |
Furniss, et al. [ | Presented a framework for decomposing RE at multiple levels and used these to examine resilient episodic behaviours in a nuclear power plant. |
Kitamura [ | Reviewed why the lessons previously learnt from nuclear disasters such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were not sufficient for preventing the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, and how RE could supplement existing strategies to improve nuclear safety. |
Macchi, et al. [ | Developed a Dimensions of Integrated Safety Culture (DISC) by integrating key attributes of OR espoused by Hollnagel [ |
Dinh, et al. [ | Explored principles and factors which could be used to improve resilience of chemical plant. |
Shirali, et al. [ | Assessed the challenges of developing RE and adaptive capacity in a Chemical process plant. |
Tamvakis and Xenidis [ | Discussed basic parameters of RE; decomposed road, rail, maritime and air transportation systems and presented a framework through which RE could be explored in this system. |
Tveiten, et al. [ | Investigated how resilience could be engineered in emergency management by making it part of continuous risk and hazard management in the Norwegian oil and gas industry. |
Wachs, et al. [ | Investigated how non-technical skills could be re-interpreted from a RE perspective in electricity distribution. |
An analysis of the literature suggests RE has been published from a number of dimensions. The most common of these include cultural, behavioural and cognition [
The first theoretical connections between RE and culture was proposed by Carthey, et al. [
Flin [
1) Top-level commitment
2) Awareness
3) Learning culture
4) Just culture
5) Flexibility
6) Preparedness
The author argued for a “need to tie this approach to the concepts of resilience” [
Woods [
The central tenet of these papers is that safety culture and RE are linked. In essence, they posit that a culture of safety is necessary for developing RE [
Many of the papers discussed above, however, are conceptual and have not been empirically tested, and very few studies have sought to make a connection between the two. It could be therefore suggested that the link between safety culture and RE is still an area of further attention, both in terms of research and practice. More empirical studies are necessary to develop, understand and/or validate any association between safety culture and RE. As discussed above, safety culture is an “interpretive device” [
Author such as Vogus and Sutcliffe [
Back, et al. [
Patterson, et al. [
Back, et al. [
Malakis and Kontogiannis [
Most of the studies above imply that cognition is intrinsically linked to way people behaved and/or acted in specific contexts or simulated scenarios. Behavioural dimensions of RE are discussed in the next section.
The idea that resilience is a behavioural characteristic arises from authors such as Vogus and Sutcliffe [
Outside of the RE literature, Mallak [
1) Risk avoidance
2) Critical understanding
3) Role dependence
4) Source reliance, and
5) Resource access.
These factors, however, have not informed any of the previously-discussed research in RE.
This aspect of RE is concerned with the way it either impacts or is expressed at different levels of system. Flin [
Earlier on, it was suggested that resilient capabilities played a role in facilitating adaptation [
1) Anticipation is the ability to address the potential, is characterized by knowing what to expect (in terms of threats and opportunities) in the future (potential changes, disruptions, pressures) and the consequences of these,
2) Responding is the ability address the actual, is characterized by knowing what to do (when faced with regular, irregular or unexampled threats) either through a prepared set of responses or by adjusting normal functioning,
3) Learning is the ability to address the factual, and is characterized by learning the right lessons from the right experience (both success and failure), and
4) Monitoring is the ability to address the critical, and is characterized by knowing what to look for; both in the environment and in the system [
A number of empirical works have been published on some of these abilities, including anticipating [
One important argument that has been proposed in the RE literature is that work-as-imagined (WAI) and work-as-performed (WAP) will always be different [
This review revealed that seven empirical studies investigated aspects of gap between WAI and WAP, including by Abech, et al. [
Abech, et al. [
Antonsen, et al. [
Da Mata, et al. [
Borys [
Costella, et al. [
Huber, et al. [
The series of studies on WAI and WAP reviewed above points towards a number of practical strategies that can be useful in researching RE in the general industry. The most important of these is that investigations into RE do not require the use of sophisticated methods, instruments or tools. This is in tandem with Hollnagel [
1) work procedures, plans, safe work method statements, and risk control practices; many of which are part of an organisation’s safe systems of work;
2) safety management systems, which are used in many medium-sized and large organisations, irrespective of the industry they are in; and
3) normal, day-to-day operations and activities.
A number of limitations can be identified in this review.
The first is the choice of databases that were used. The predominant databases that were searched included those which capture studies from the social sciences. This will have excluded articles captured in Engineering databases (such as Compedex or Inspec), Web of Science, Scopus or MEDLINE, including those published from a systems engineering perspective. This needs to be considered by future reviewers.
The second is the choice of keywords used in the search criteria. A deliberate choice was made not to use safety management in the keywords as this will have generated thousands of articles. Future reviews should take into account a combination of keywords which tie in the key ideas from OR, RE and safety management.
The third is that most of articles generated included those which had been presented or published in conference proceedings, and later published as book chapters, or as journals between 1998 and 2012. This was due to the fact this research was conducted during a time when RE ideas were early in the inception stages. In this regard the author acknowledges that since this work was completed two recent reviews have been published on the topic [
The fourth limitation is that the articles selected for final review were not appraised for quality as required by PRISMA. Again, this needs to be considered in future reviews. While no specific safety management tools exist, the guidelines suggested for critical skills appraisals [
The fifth limitation is with the way in which the author chose to unpack the themes according to dimensions (Section 4.4). In the traditional sense, the notion of engineering is explicitly linked to something technical. However, this review did not investigate this dimension of RE. This needs to be considered in future reviews.
Despite these limitations this review has generated a number of important findings.
First, there is no universal definition of RE [
Second (and related to the first), there is no uniform way of assessing, examining, exploring, or measuring RE [
Third, RE is multifactorial. While the published literature made reference to many factors, three have been suggested to be important for RE. These include culture [
Fourth, it is multi-dimensional, so it can be assessed, examined, measured or observed at different levels of granularity. However, although individuals may exhibit many of those abilities that drive resilience, RE can be best associated with collective units (group/teams, operations, plant, industry) [
Fifth, it is associated with anticipation, responding, learning and monitoring [
Sixth, it is linked with adaptation and/or adjustments [
And seventh, the gap between WAI and WAP is an important facet of RE [
This review has identified eight main gaps in the published literature on RE.
First, while current research on RE has largely been carried out in a range of complex workplaces (such as healthcare, oil and gas, and nuclear power plants), there is a sparsity of empirical studies from contemporary high risk domains such as construction or mining, although propositions for such research have been made [
Second, while some factors associated with safety culture have also been suggested to be important for RE, the mechanisms and linkages between these are not clear. More empirical studies are necessary to develop, understand and/or validate any association between safety culture and RE [
Third, while behavior and cognition have been as important dimensions of RE, the mechanisms and linkages between these, or with safety culture, are not clear. More empirical studies are also necessary to develop, understand and/or validate any association between behaviour, cognition and RE.
Fourth, while learning from success has been suggested to be important in RE, very few empirical studies have been published on this aspect. Futures empirical RE studies need to take into account what has actually worked, i.e. successes, in order to get a deeper understanding of how things actually happen. Conceptualising and operationalising of success in RE needs to take into account the four main principles that have been suggested for RE; including anticipation, response, learning and monitoring [
Fifth, most research appears to have been limited to examining single units or levels of an organisation. The achievement of safety, at least on the level where work is done at the sharp end of risk is likely to be influenced by other levels, such as managers, supervisors, associations and government [
Sixth, most of the empirical works reviewed in this article include qualitative studies, consistent with [
Seventh, while the published papers provide a rich source of information on concepts, ideas and notions associated with RE, many of the papers published have failed to build on each other’s work so there is very little shared analytical framework [
However, before such conceptual and theoretical framework can be developed and used, it is imperative to identify indicator(s) that can be useful in advancing research and application in RE. Although the gap between WAI and WAP has been suggested to be an important, a framework which integrates the key principles, concepts and ideas of RE with WAI/WAP is missing. This represents the eighth gap in this review.
The research gaps identified above provide avenues for furthering research on RE for safety management. However, advancing such research framing a working definition in order to set some boundary and focus for RE. Based on the key concepts and ideas illustrated in this review, the following is proposed:
“Resilience engineering is a sophisticated approach for managing organisational safety through the development of cognitive, behavioural, and cultural abilities to enable organisational members at all levels to actively anticipate, respond, monitor and learn to operate close to the boundary of safe operations as part of normal work, by narrowing the gap between work as imagined and work as performed” [
In proposing the above definition, it is not being suggested that the above is anyway superior to what authors have suggested, consistent with Westrum [
Framing RE in this way makes a number of things clear.
One, resilience engineering is about organisational safety, not individual safety. Two, it incorporates cognition, behavioural and cultural aspects of an organisation, so research on RE can be directed at any or all of these aspects. Three, although an individual can have all these attributes, it is only when they are collectively distributed across all levels of the organisation that these play a role in RE. Four, the above collective aspects enable the organisation collectively to anticipate, respond, monitor and learn. Five, resilience engineering is about operating as close as possible to the boundaries of failure as part of normal work. This means research on RE should entail normal, everyday work; not simulations. And six, the gap between WAI and WAP is an important facet of RE.
Many industries utilise safe systems of work such as safety procedures, safety rules, permits [
Behavioural approaches are also commonly used for managing safety in the industry, and a practical research question which could be asked here is whether emergent approaches such as psychological contracts of safety [
In terms of learning from success, many organisations capture, analyse and manage data on near-misses and dangerous occurrences. Practical research in this area can focus on for example; how, or the extent to which, these are managed, and the role that anticipation, awareness, learning and monitoring play in their effective management.
Advancing research in this area also requires the use of a suitable conceptual framework. The findings of this review suggest it is important that such framework would be aimed at understanding:
1) multiple levels of the system being investigated,
2) the key interactions that occur across these levels, and
3) how safety emerges out of such interactions.
To address gaps in methodology, future research in RE also needs to include quantitative studies. A practical starting point can be through the behavioural, cultural and cognitive dimensions of RE; and which can be investigated at team, organisational of industry levels. Data collected from such research can be analysed at the above levels of granularity, or examine their influence on the key principles of anticipation, awareness, learning and monitoring. Such research also needs to enable an exploration and/or measurement of the gap between WAI and WAP, and ideally integrate the multidimensional nature and construct of RE. Such a framework can be based on either the functionalist or interpretive perspectives of safety management.
M.P thanks the Australian Federal Government for a Australian Postgraduate Award (2010-2013) and the University of Ballarat for a Higher Degree by Research Scholarship (2010-2013). Feedback and comments from anonymous reviewers and participants of the 6th Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics Conference is also appreciated. M.P is also grateful for the comments provided by the anonymous reviewer, whose insights helped to enhance the findings of this review.
Pillay, M. (2017) Resilience Engineering: An Integrative Review of Fundamental Concepts and Directions for Future Research in Safety Management. Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology, 7, 129-160. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojsst.2017.74012