Organizational Learning Activities in High‐hazard Industries: The Logics Underlying Self‐Analysis

TLDR

Organizational learning occurs when individuals, groups, and organizations gather, digest, and act on information, but fragmented, myopic, and disparate understandings of work—such as differing logics of anticipation, fixing, and abstract learning—lead to failures to learn from experience and recurrent crises. The study examines how nuclear and chemical process plants learn from precursors and near‑misses, arguing that broadening and integrating disparate logics is needed for enhanced safety learning. Specifically, the author analyses the linked assumptions or logics underlying incident reviews, root‑cause analysis teams, and self‑analysis programmes.

Abstract

Organizational learning takes place through activities performed by individuals, groups, and organizations as they gather and digest information, imagine and plan new actions, and implement change. I examine the learning practices of companies in two industries – nuclear power plants and chemical process plants – that must manage safety as a major component of operations, and therefore must learn from precursors and near‐misses rather than exclusively by trial‐and‐error. Specifically, I analyse the linked assumptions or logics underlying incident reviews, root cause analysis teams, and self‐analysis programmes. These logics arise from occupational and hierarchical groups that work on different problems in different ways – for example, anticipation and resilience, fixing and learning, concrete and abstract. In organizations with fragmentary, myopic and disparate understandings of how the work is accomplished, there are likely to be more failures to learn from operating experience, recurrent problems, and cyclical crises. Enhanced learning requires ways to broaden and bring together disparate logics.