Editors:
- Brings together contemporary scholarship on error management and leading industry practitioners for the first time
- Offers a rare glimpse into error management in extremely high stakes professional environments
- Provides a vital reference tool for organizations and leaders who want to learn from mistakes, rather than just shift the blame
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Table of contents (17 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
Even today the reality of error management in some organizations is simple: “Don’t make mistakes. And if you do, you’re on your own unless you can blame someone else.” In most, it has moved on but it is still often centered around quality control, with Six Sigma Black Belts seeking to eradicate errors with an unattainable goal of zero.
But the best organizations have gone further. They understand that mistakes happen, be they systemic or human. They have realized that rather than being stigmatized, errors have to be openly discussed, analyzed, and used as a source for learning.
In How Could This Happen? Jan Hagen collects insights from the leading academics in this field – covering the prerequisites for error reporting, such as psychological safety, organizational learning and innovation,safety management systems, and the influence of senior leadership behavior on the reporting climate.
This research is complemented by contributions from practitioners who write about their professional experiences of error management. They provide not only ideas for implementation but also offer an inside view of highly demanding work environments, such as flight operations in the military and operating nuclear submarines.
Every organization makes mistakes. Not every organization learns from them. It’s the job of leaders to create the culture and processes that enable that to happen. Hagen and his team show you how.
Reviews
“Stories of error after the fact inevitably are simple and straightforward. But thisconception belies what everyone knows to be true. Underneath simple, linear, obvious stories of error is a more complex reality, a sorrowful reality of actions going wrong. Errors have consequences for organizations, and they have consequences for the humans involved in them. Jan Hagen’s comprehensive volume of essays by a renowned set of scholars could not be timelier or more important for enhancing our understanding of errors and their management. This book is a blessing for scholars looking for new theoretical footholds in what some think has become a moribund domain of research inquiry. And, perhaps more importantly, it is an elemental book for leaders and others trying to manage complex organizational systems.” (Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Business and Medicine, Johns Hopkins University)
Editors and Affiliations
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ESMT Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Jan U. Hagen
About the editor
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: How Could This Happen?
Book Subtitle: Managing Errors in Organizations
Editors: Jan U. Hagen
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76403-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Business and Management, Business and Management (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-76402-3Published: 09 August 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-09480-5Published: 19 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-76403-0Published: 26 July 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 292
Number of Illustrations: 17 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Science in Business and Management, Business Strategy/Leadership