ABSTRACT
The elimination of accidents and errors is an admirable goal, but it is also an unrealistic and unachievable goal. Accidents will always occur, although rarely, when there is a concatenation of infrequent circumstances in complex systems. In Reason's (1990, 1997) terms, when the gaps in system defenses align (latent failures), unpredictable catastrophes will happen. The elimination of human error is also an impossibility. Nature will continue to impose limits on human performance and imperfectible humans will continue to err. Chapter 5 introduced the concept of error management as a cultural universal which could shape organizational behavior in high-risk, sociotechnical industries. In this chapter, we discuss the implementation of error management (EM).
