Transactive Responsibility Systems and High Reliability Teams: A Tentative Formulation

Understanding how teams perform successfully in high-risk settings can provide us with insights into the processes by which safety is created. Building upon previous field and laboratory studies, we propose a tentative formulation of a concept, transactive responsibility system, to account for the intricate, complex responsibility system emerged in team interaction. With a transactive responsibility system, a team can deal with the challenges of conflicting goals of training and performing and rapidly changing work environments found in many settings. A set of measurement proposals is made to illustrate the potential practical use of the concept. Potential impact on training is speculated.