Introduction
Safety is one of the fundamental issues that should be adequately observed. Safety entails issues like safety management, accident investigation, safety culture, and risk assessment. The traditional focus of safety has been on things that have gone wrong or which could probably go wrong. In this article, the author defines safety as freedom from unacceptable risk. The author emphasizes that focusing on what is probable to go wrong is sensible because every organization needs to have an understanding of what has gone wrong as well as what might go wrong to establish measures to prevent it from occurring (Hollnagel xxx). The target audience for this article are enterprises, engineers, and other the public in general. Therefore this paper will summarize the authors work then analyze the author’s presumption that Resilience Engineering views the things that go wrong as the consequence of the things that go right and are the outcome of similar underlying processes. The claims that things that go right as well as things that go wrong needs to be described in the same way. The paper will also analyze how he has adequately specified his key concept Resilience Engineering, identify how his examples meet the examples of Resilience Engineering, and argument that Resilience Engineering should replace the traditional approaches to safety.
Article summary
The main aim emphasis according to the traditional approach to safety is normally the unwanted losses, outcomes, and injuries which are resulting from adverse events. This suits the ordinary understanding of safety as being the freedom from unacceptable risk (Hollnagel xxx). Nonetheless, Resilience Engineering, on the other hand, describes safety as the capability of being successful under various situations. It is because of this definition that Resilience Engineering is very vital in studying things that go right just as things that go wrong. According to Resilience Engineering, it is mandatory to understand the socio-technical system’s normal functioning as well as an adequate basis to understand how it fails. Moreover, it quite easy and most effective in increasing safety by increasing the things that go right, rather than by minimizing things that go wrong (Hollnagel xxxii). The author goes ahead to make resilience definition to become more concrete by highlighting four abilities that are mandatory for a system to remain resilient. In essence, these abilities are the ability for responding to events, monitoring developments in progress, projecting future threats as well as opportunities, and also learning from past successes and failures. To add on it, the author conclude by stating that Resilience Engineering influences how the four capabilities can be formed and managed.
Article critic
To begin with, the author has adequately defined and describe that Resilience Engineering views failures as the consequence of the success and are the outcome of similar underlying processes. He has efficiently created a distinction between the traditional approach to safety and Resilience Engineering, which helps in differentiating between the two and getting to understand his presumption better. The author has also stressed on the different position that the Resilience Engineering take on safety. The author has clearly described that the Resilience Engineering position that it views the failures as a consequence of success and thus concludes that both are resulting from a similar process (Hollnagel xxxi). To make his point clear in distinguishing the two positions, he compares this position to the position of the traditional approach to safety. Based on these comparison and vivid description made by the author, the audience or readers are able to have an understanding as to why things go right so that they can also understand why things go wrong.
To make his position more sensible, the author has effectively used examples to clarify and expound on his point about Resilience Engineering. The author has used the example of the probability of failure as being 10E-4, whereby humans are typically blamed for three-quarters of one situation from 10.000 whenever things go wrong. Using the same logic, humans need to be applauded for the same three-quarters of the 9.999 incidences whereby nonentity goes wrong (Hollnagel xxxiv). This example is appropriate and very effective in clarifying is presumption. Based on this example, one can understand the outcomes of events can equally make things go wrong or right.
The author has also staged his arguments about Resilience Engineering replacing traditional approaches to safety. First, he effectively made the point clear that it is essential to attempt to understand the general performance of a system, instead of limiting ourselves to focus on failures, meaning that we have to try understanding all the results. The author also pinpoints the psychological fact that safety is almost invisible, whereas an absence of safety is very visible (Hollnagel xxxv). He also highlights the paradox that we tend to identify the unusual and but hardly notice the usual. He has tactfully used this paradox to express his point that safety needs to deal with both safe performance, and this can be accomplished through Resilience Engineering which acknowledges failure as well as those success. In support of Resilience Engineering, the author has staged a catchy argument that it is essential to consider success and failures specifically to have an understanding of why things go wrong. To back up his arguments, the author has also used diagrams and table.
Conclusion
To sum it all, based on the analysis, the author has managed to present his argument in a manner that enables the audience to understand more about Resilience Engineering and why it is vital that it replaces the traditional approaches to safety. By use of effective and appropriate examples, comparison between traditional approaches to safety and Resilient Engineering, the use of diagrams and tables, the author can illustrate adversity of safety. This critique is essential in analyzing and determining the strengths and weaknesses of the author. The critic also helps in analyzing the significance of Resilience Engineering. Additionally, there is a need to research the effectiveness of Resilience Engineering in promoting safety.