ABSTRACT
Creating resilience through preparation and restoration embodies a fundamental tension. No complex, dynamic operating world is likely to be immune to this conflict on how to absorb the cognitive and coordinative demands that come with low-probability/highconsequence events. Preparation of practitioners for safetycritical situations is mostly organized around a priori control, and driven by a limited number of predictable scenarios (laid down in training and procedures for how to handle particular situations). Restoration of a safety-critical situation, on the other hand, often relies on practitioners departing from protocol, and on them extemporizing and importing new knowledge and skills (e.g. Weick, 1988; Orasanu et al., 2001; Dekker, 2003; Dismukes et al., 2007)
Preparation, in other words, may assume that the demands of high-consequence/low-probability events can be absorbed by matching situational symptoms with pre-fabricated scripts of coordinated action that not only appear in procedures such as the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) (onboard flight decks) but also get rehearsed in practitioner training. These forms of preparation support the prioritization of actions and callouts in the face of time pressure and resource constraints, help assign tasks, set the pace and order for the work to be done, organize
roles and calibrate mutual expectations of activity and doublechecking. However, the limits of, and misplaced confidence in, such preparation have been commented on before (e.g., Suchman, 1987; Wright and McCarthy, 2003; Burian and Barshi, 2003), and the literature has shed some light on the difficulty of processes of sensemaking in demand situations that lie beyond procedural reach (Weick, 1993).
