Overview

When faced with a ’human error’ problem, you may be tempted to ask 'Why didn’t these people watch out better?' Or, 'How can I get my people more engaged in safety?' You might think you can solve your safety problems by telling your people to be more careful, by reprimanding the miscreants, by issuing a new rule or procedure and demanding compliance. These are all expressions of 'The Bad Apple Theory' where you believe your system is basically safe if it were not for those few unreliable people in it. Building on its successful predecessors, the third edition of The Field Guide to Understanding ’Human Error’ will help you understand a new way of dealing with a perceived 'human error' problem in your organization. It will help you trace how your organization juggles inherent trade-offs between safety and other pressures and expectations, suggesting that you are not the custodian of an already safe system. It will encourage you to start looking more closely at the performance that others may still call 'human error', allowing you to discover how your people create safety through practice, at all levels of your organization, mostly successfully, under the pressure of resource constraints and multiple conflicting goals. The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error' will help you understand how to move beyond 'human error'; how to understand accidents; how to do better investigations; how to understand and improve your safety work. You will be invited to think creatively and differently about the safety issues you and your organization face. In each, you will find possibilities for a new language, for different concepts, and for new leverage points to influence your own thinking and practice, as well as that of your colleagues and organization. If you are faced with a ’human error’ problem, abandon the fallacy of a quick fix. Read this book.

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9781472439055

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Reviews

Comments on the 2nd edition:'Insightful, useful, refreshing. A must-read for anyone tired of the old view of human error'Boyd Falconer, University of New South Wales, Australia'It is accessible, practical, eminently readable and will be of great use to safety practitioners whatever their background.'Health & Safety at Work, July 2007'This past year I read your book The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error based on a recommendation of a colleague. I must admit it is one of the best book that I have read on accident prevention and safety. I have been practicing as a construction safety professional for 17 years and have struggled to accurately and completely articulate the concepts you so eloquently describe in your book. Although it draws many examples from an aviation safety standpoint, your book stands up brilliantly as a framework for understanding human error and accident prevention in any industry. Subsequently, I am using it as the text for my course Safety in the Construction Industry here at Columbia this fall.The construction industry is so very stuck in the world of the Old View. Convincing construction management professional that removing bad apples is not the answer is a tough sell. Your book is making my job quite a bit easier. Thank you.'Ray Master, Columbia University, USA' No matter if the reader is an upper level executive in an aerospace company, a member of an accident investigation team, a safety engineer, or a university student, Sid's Field Guide is equally as useful. This book presents important ideas for those who regulate human factors investigation and research, making it an essential read for the academician, the research analyst, and the government regulator'International Journal of Applied Aviation Studies, Vol 7, No 2Comments on the 3rd Edition:'If you design equipment or operating procedures, if you investigate accidents or deal with safety, this is an essential book. Sidney Dekker, a leading world authority on human error has enhanced his already exceptional Field Guide to be a concise, readable guide to both design of equipment and procedures and also the analysis of mishaps. The label human error is misleading and its use prevents discovery and correction of the true underlying causes of incidents. So read about hindsight bias, about the difference between the view from inside the system rather than from outside, and about difference between the blunt end (where you should do your work) and the sharp end (where people tend to focus). Read, learn, and put these ideas into practice. The results will be fewer incidents, less damage, less injury.'Don Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things

Author Information

Sidney Dekker (PhD Ohio State University, USA, 1996) is currently professor at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, where he runs the Safety Science Innovation Lab. He is also Professor (Hon.) of psychology at The University of Queensland, and Professor (Hon.) of human factors and patient safety at the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane. Previously, Sidney was Professor of human factors and system safety at Lund University in Sweden. After becoming full professor, he learned to fly the Boeing 737, working part-time as an airline pilot out of Copenhagen. Sidney is the best-selling author of a multitude of human factors and safety books, including, most recently, Safety Differently (2014), Second Victim (2013), Just Culture (2012), Drift into Failure (2011), and Patient Safety (2011).

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