The role of standardization in safety management – A case study of a major oil & gas company

This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of standardization, when applied to the field of safety management. Recently, there are signs that organizations operating in high risk environments take further steps towards standardization. On the positive side, standardization has the potential to enhance the predictability of normal operations as well as facilitating the transfer of lessons learnt across organizational contexts. On the negative side, standardization is by definition a strategy for dealing with known hazards and accident scenarios. We discuss how too strong an emphasis on standardization can involve unintended negative consequences for organizations' crisis-handling capabilities.

[1]  S. Timmermanns,et al.  The Challenge of Evidence-Based Medicine and Standardization in Health Care , 2003 .

[2]  Anne S. Miner,et al.  Organizational Improvisation and Organizational Memory , 1998 .

[3]  B. Harrison,et al.  Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility. , 1995 .

[4]  K. Weick.  The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster , 1993 .

[5]  Tor-Olav Nævestad,et al.  Mapping Research on Culture and Safety in High-Risk Organizations: Arguments for a Sociotechnical Understanding of Safety Culture , 2009 .

[6]  Teemu Reiman,et al.  Safety management challenges and tensions in the European nuclear power industry , 2007 .

[7]  Kathleen L. Gregory,et al.  Native-view paradigms: Multiple cultures and culture conflicts in organizations. , 1983 .

[8]  A. Strauss,et al.  The Discovery of Grounded Theory , 1967 .

[9]  K. Weick.  Organizational Culture as a Source of High Reliability , 1987 .

[10]  Stian Antonsen,et al.  Safety culture and the issue of power , 2009 .

[11]  N. Denzin,et al.  Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research. , 2005 .

[12]  H. W. Heinrich.  Industrial Accident Prevention , 1941 .

[13]  T. Davenport.  The coming commoditization of processes. , 2005, Harvard business review.

[14]  Patrick Lagadec,et al.  Preventing Chaos in a Crisis: Strategies for Prevention, Control and Damage Limitation , 1993 .

[15]  Joanne D. Martin.  Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives , 1992 .

[16]  Thomas R. Krause,et al.  The Behavior-Based Safety Process: Managing Involvement for an Injury-Free Culture , 1990 .

[17]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  The Structuring of Organizations , 1979 .

[18]  Dan Petersen,et al.  Techniques of safety management , 1971 .

[19]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations , 1983 .

[20]  Christine Moorman,et al.  The Convergence of Planning and Execution: Improvisation in New Product Development , 1998 .

[21]  B. Turner.  Man Made Disasters , 1995 .

[22]  Stian Antonsen,et al.  Safety Culture: Theory, Method and Improvement , 2012 .

[23]  Frederick Winslow Taylor,et al.  科学管理原理=The principles of scientific management , 2014 .

[24]  Anil Gaba,et al.  Coda : Creativity and Improvisation in Jazzand Organizations: Implications Fororganizational Learning , 1998 .

[25]  Daniel Nelson,et al.  Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory since 1945 , 1991 .

[26]  Karl E. Weick,et al.  Managing the unexpected: resilient performance in an age of uncertainty, second edition , 2007 .

[27]  Edwin Hutchins,et al.  Organizing Work by Adaptation , 1991 .

[28]  Frances J. Milliken,et al.  Searching for Common Threads: Understanding the Multiple Effects of Diversity in Organizational Groups , 1996 .