Fallible decisions in management: learning from errors

Abstract

Systems in the natural resource industry vary in their tolerance of human errors. Such operations are open to fallible decisions resulting from the way in which the organization deals with information. Organizations must therefore improve on their ability to learn from incidents in order to reduce the frequency and severity of errors. Presents information on fallible decisions from the management and cognitive sciences, as well as major disasters (for example Challenger; Herald of Free Enterprise). Describes a framework for increasing organizational learning through incident analysis and presents a five‐step method for systematically analysing incidents.

Citation

Blanco, J., Lewko, J.H. and Gillingham, D. (1996), "Fallible decisions in management: learning from errors", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 5-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/09653569610112871