Active Failures

Safety Thought of the Week… Active Failures (Unsafe Acts): A Brief Refresher (James Reason)

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Violations arise from motivational factors and fall into four types:routine (or corner-cutting) violations, thrill-seeking or optimizing violations, necessary violations and exceptional violations. Unsafe acts are of two distinct types: errors and violations. Errors arise from informational problems and fall into three categories: Everyone makes errors.

Former Production Manager Pleads Guilty After Releasing Chemical Pollutants into the Cape Fear River (Active Failure vs Latent Organizational Failure)

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This case is a classic example of how Latent Organizational Failures INFLUENCE the decision-making of workers (and middle managers). At the end of this press release, the DOJ admits that “Company management had informed some of its employees that if operations came to a halt, the company would suffer serious financial harm, potentially including dissolution.”

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