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The aviation industry recognised the significance of human error in accidents in the 1970s, and has been instrumental in the development of special training, designed to reduce error and increase the effectiveness of flight crews. These crew resource management (CRM) programmes focus on “non‐technical skills” critical for enhanced operational performance, such as leadership, situation awareness, decision making, team work and communication. More recently CRM has been adopted by other “high reliability” team environments including anaesthesiology, air traffic control, the Merchant Navy, the nuclear power industry, aviation maintenance, and the offshore oil industry. This review paper describes the basic principles of crew resource management, then outlines recent developments in aviation and other high reliability work environments.

A relationship between personality and incident/emergency command ability is often assumed to exist, yet little research has explicitly examined such a relationship. Good leaders in emergencies are expected to be calm, decisive under pressure and confident in action. Such qualities, by their very nature, are difficult to gauge in standard selection procedures. This presents organizations with the problem of how to determine whether someone possesses the right personal qualities and skills for a command position. Investigates the potential contribution of a personality questionnaire to the prediction of command and crisis management ability of offshore installation managers (OIM). In an emergency, they are expected to take command and ensure the safety of offshore personnel, which may include their safe evacuation. A total of 154 OIMs completed the Occupational Personality Questionnaire Concept 5.2, of whom 93 were rated by trainers on their ability to deal with a simulated offshore emergency. Discusses correlations of their personality scores with performance ratings and revealed few significant results and the difficulties of finding a test of emergency command ability.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03090599510096617. When citing the article, please cite: Rhona H. Flin, (1995), “Crew resource management for teams in the offshore oil industry”, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 19 Iss: 9, pp. 23 - 27.

This paper examines the sources of stress likely to be encountered by emergency managers when responding to a disaster. Stressors relating to environmental (e.g. time pressure, level of risk, heat), organisational (e.g. bureaucracy, appropriateness of information, decision support and management systems) and operational (e.g. incident command, decision making, interagency liaison, team and media management) demands are considered. The mediating role of personality and transient states of physical (e.g. fitness and fatigue) and psychological (e.g. high levels of occupational stress) states are reviewed in terms of their influence on stress, judgement and decision making. Strategies for identifying which of these potential stress factors can be controlled or reduced and for training emergency managers to deal with the others are discussed.

The international aviation industry uses a special form of human factors training with their flight deck crews and other teams, called crew resource management (CRM). CRM is designed by psychologists and pilots to reduce errors and accidents and to improve emergency response capability by improving teamwork skills. Key topics include communication, decision making, assertiveness and stress management. CRM courses are now being used in shipping, medicine and the nuclear power industry. Follows an outline of CRM and describes an application in the offshore oil industry with control room operators and emergency command teams.

Following civilian disasters such as Piper Alpha, Hillsborough and King′s Cross, personnel professionals are rethinking the types of individuals needed to fill senior posts, considering the demands of responding to a serious emergency. Presents the results from a project designed to examine the current selection, training and assessment procedures for managers of offshore oil and gas installations in the North Sea, with particular emphasis on their ability to take command in the event of a serious offshore incident. Personnel and operations managers in 38 oil and gas exploration and production companies in the UK were interviewed. Characteristics sought in an offshore installation manager were leadership and command ability, communication skills, sound judgement, decisiveness and a stable disposition. Selection decisions were based predominantly on the candidate′s previous performance, appraisal reports and managerial recommendations rather than more formal methods such as interview panels, assessment centres or psychometric tests. An industry‐wide concern regarding managerial competence has led to increased use of emergency management simulations for training and assessment. The lack of formal assessments during the selection procedure is surprising, but the recent introduction of high fidelity, emergency management simulations present an additional source of valuable information on future candidates if assessment data are collected rigorously.

Following civilian disasters such as Piper Alpha, Hillsborough and King’s Cross, personnel professionals are rethinking the types of individuals needed to fill senior posts, considering the demands of responding to a serious emergency. Presents the results from a project designed to examine the current selection, training and assessment procedures for managers of offshore oil and gas installations in the North Sea, with particular emphasis on their ability to take command in the event of a serious offshore incident. Personnel and operations managers in 38 oil and gas exploration and production companies in the UK were interviewed. Characteristics sought in an offshore installation manager were leadership and command ability, communication skills, sound judgement, decisiveness and a stable disposition. Selection decisions were based predominantly on the candidate’s previous performance, appraisal reports and managerial recommendations rather than more formal methods such as interview panels, assessment centres or psychometric tests. An industry‐wide concern regarding managerial competence has led to increased use of emergency management simulations for training and assessment. The lack of formal assessments during the selection procedure is surprising, but the recent introduction of high fidelity, emergency management simulations present an additional source of valuable information on future candidates if assessment data are collected rigorously.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among sources of stress, coping strategy, job satisfaction and psychological well‐being and to examine the roles of coping behaviour as the moderator variable.

The study uses a questionnaire survey and area sampling design, with responses of 617 Malaysian fire fighters and 436 UK fire fighters. The questionnaire comprises: the Sources of Occupational Stress in Fire Fighters & Paramedics scale, the Coping Response of Rescue Workers and the Job Satisfaction Scale. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis is used to examine the moderating effect of coping behaviour on job satisfaction and psychological well‐being.

It is found that the sources of occupational stress have significant negative correlations with job satisfaction and psychological well‐being. The results of the regression analysis indicates that overall coping behaviour has a significant influence on overall job satisfaction for UK fire fighters but not for Malaysian fire fighters. However, overall coping behaviour has a significant effect as a moderating variable between sources of stress and psychological health for Malaysian fire fighters.

The results suggest that training that focuses on psychological aspects (stress management, coping strategies, etc.), and the use of counsellors should be highlighted. It is suggested that the Malaysian Fire Brigade should establish a Counselling Unit, to deal with psychological problems faced by the fire fighters.

This study shows how theories originating in developed countries (USA and Canada) can help explain the psychological health of the fire fighters in a developing country (Malaysia). The analysis of statistical results led to the development of a model to interpret the factors influencing psychological health in Malaysian and UK fire fighters. Beside that, the evidence from the study also highlighted that factors such as culture may influence the ways employees cope up with the situations.

This paper aims to raise some important questions for cross‐cultural research on occupational stress and well‐being and sets the stage for the five papers in the special issue.

This paper reviews some previous literature on cross‐cultural understanding of occupational stress and well‐being, why such research is difficult to undertake, and summarizes the five original manuscripts that comprise this special issue.

Manuscripts in this special issue represent authors from several countries and report data collected from over a dozen countries. Some contributions attempt to replicate previous North American and European research findings in other countries while others undertake comparative studies of two or more countries.

It is important to undertake more cross‐cultural comparative research of the effects of occupational stress and well‐being to determine whether any boundary conditions exist for previous results based in North American and European samples. In addition, future research should include assessments of some national culture values.