Organizational Reliability and Resilience as a Dynamic System: Knowledge Modeling with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

Safety research in complex environments recommends that high-hazard industries improve reliability and increase their capacity for resilience by enacting principles for high-reliability organizing (HRO). This view has been highly influential in many industries, ranging from aviation to hospitals, and is at the core of many safety culture programs. However, even though HRO principles originated in business practice and were observed in diverse organizations, practitioners frequently struggle to enact them in the contexts of their work. This is likely caused by two limitations of current research: principles are insufficiently specified and the interdependencies between them, such as mutually reinforcing vs. tradeoff relationships, are poorly understood, forcing practitioners to fill in the gaps based on experience and intuition. In response, this study develops a generalized system model of organizational reliability (ORM), based on Fuzzy Cognitive Map modeling. that reflects two sources of knowledge: academic research literature on HRO and practitioner knowledge in a specific safety context, namely the offshore oil and gas industry. The FCM-based ORM (FORM) is tested through simulation and evaluated through focus groups with industry experts. Findings show challenging interdependencies between HRO principles and the role of industry-specific conditions, which necessitate context awareness and system perspective.