ABSTRACT

Introduction Ways to characterize and measure an organization’s resilience can be based on an analogy from the world of materials engineering: that of the relationship between stress – the varying loads placed on a mechanical structure, and the resulting strain – how the structure stretches in response. This aspect of material science is related to the basic finding in Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) that demand factors are critical (Woods, 1988; Rasmussen et al., 1994). Thus, to characterize a cognitive system of people and machines one should examine how that joint system responds to different demands on work, in other words, plot how a system stretches in response to changes in demands. For example, Woods & Patterson (2000; cf. Woods & Hollnagel, 2006, chapter 9) used this idea to propose that one should evaluate and predict system performance by relating how demands increase and cascade to the ability of the joint system to bring more knowledge and expertise to bear. In effect, they suggested a joint system is characterized by a mapping between how demands increase relative to how the system stretches to accommodate the increasing demands (tempo, cascade of effects, and the potential for bottlenecks).