The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error 2nd Edition

by Sidney Dekker (Author)

70 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0754648260

ISBN-10: 0754648265

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There is a newer edition of this item:

The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'
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When faced with a human error problem, you may be tempted to ask 'Why didn't they watch out better? How could they not have noticed?'. You think you can solve your human error problem by telling people to be more careful, by reprimanding the miscreants, by issuing a new rule or procedure. These are all expressions of 'The Bad Apple Theory', where you believe your system is basically safe if it were not for those few unreliable people in it. This old view of human error is increasingly outdated and will lead you nowhere. The new view, in contrast, understands that a human error problem is actually an organizational problem. Finding a 'human error' by any other name, or by any other human, is only the beginning of your journey, not a convenient conclusion. The new view recognizes that systems are inherent trade-offs between safety and other pressures (for example: production). People need to create safety through practice, at all levels of an organization. Breaking new ground beyond its successful predecessor, The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error guides you through the traps and misconceptions of the old view. It explains how to avoid the hindsight bias, to zoom out from the people closest in time and place to the mishap, and resist the temptation of counterfactual reasoning and judgmental language. But it also helps you look forward. It suggests how to apply the new view in building your safety department, handling questions about accountability, and constructing meaningful countermeasures. It even helps you in getting your organization to adopt the new view and improve its learning from failure. So if you are faced by a human error problem, abandon the fallacy of a quick fix. Read this book.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

' No matter if the reader is an upper level executive in an aerospace company, a member of an accident investigation team, a safety engineer, or a university student, Sid's Field Guide is equally as useful. This book presents important ideas for those who regulate human factors investigation and research, making it an essential read for the academician, the research analyst, and the government regulator' --International Journal of Applied Aviation Studies, Vol 7, No 2

About the Author

Sidney Dekker is Professor and Director of the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Previously Professor at Lund University, Sweden, and Director of the Leonardo Da Vinci Center for Complexity and Systems Thinking there, he gained his Ph.D. in Cognitive Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University, USA. He has worked in New Zealand, the Netherlands and England, been Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Visiting Academic in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University in Melbourne, and Professor of Community Health Science at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba in Canada. Sidney is author of several best-selling books on system failure, human error, ethics and governance. He has been flying the Boeing 737NG part-time as airline pilot for the past few years. The OSU Foundation in the United States awards a yearly Sidney Dekker Critical Thinking Award..

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CRC Press; 2nd edition (June 30, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 252 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0754648265
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0754648260
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #967,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #242 in Industrial Health & Safety
- #602 in Occupational Therapy (Books)
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Customer Reviews:
70 ratings

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Sidney Dekker

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Sidney Dekker is Professor of Human Factors and Flight Safety, and Director of Research at the School of Aviation, Lund University, Sweden. He has previously worked at the Public Transport Cooperation in Melbourne, Australia; the Massey University School of Aviation, New Zealand, British Aerospace, UK, and has been a Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His specialties and research interests are system safety, human error, reactions to failure and criminalization, and organizational resilience. He has some experience as a pilot, type trained on the DC-9and Airbus A340.

Customer reviews

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Top reviews from the United States

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Cliente Kindle

Back to the basics

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 23, 2007

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We all are extremely good to forecast the past. When this simple principle is applied to human error, it is very easy blaming the human operator.

Dekker tries to put himself in the shoes of that human operator showing why an analysis that does not try to understand an event from that position is useless.

There is a very hard criticism to different kind of positions taken by people that do not make that effort.

If we try to make something as a "winzip on a summary" of the book, I think we could reach these conclusions:

When we have to analyze an event, it should be useful starting with this hipothesis: "People are not usually dumb, people are not usually crazy and people have not usually chosen the day of a big accident to make self-killing." This starting point could be enough to avoid many of the practices fairly critiziced by Dekker.

12 people found this helpful

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Fabricio Moresco

Looking forward to see the New View in progress

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 23, 2017

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Looking forward to see the New View in progress. I would recommend this book to all involved in safety management and all the practitioners whom really cares about a safety culture and safe flights. We must understand that safety is in our hands and it's our responsibility to improve it as much as we can.

One person found this helpful

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Peter S

Worth Reading - A Good Guide to Investigators of Accidents.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 6, 2015

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Quite an interesting take on accident investigation and understanding human error. The paradigm of the investigator placing themselves "inside the tunnel" to avoid hindsight bias is a powerful metaphor.
Some of the chapters get to be a bit hard going - with lots of restating the basic tenet of Old View vs New View though.
All in all - quite thought provoking and worth a read.

3 people found this helpful

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Kurt Gardiner

Change the way you think about errors and problems.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 28, 2016

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Great read to change how we think about problems in the workplace, to help broaden perspective beyond looking at the person at the coal face. Mandatory reading if you're in any industry or workplace which performs root cause analysis, incident reports or anything along these lines & wish to improve how your organisation moves forward.

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John H. Fischbach

The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 29, 2009

Verified Purchase

Look out if you want to view human error from a different angle than the old traditional view of an accident. Dekker's strategy points the investigator to view the events of the incident from the view point of those involved to gain a much greater appreciation of the event. Franz Boas is not mentioned but the idea of cultural relativity is apparent in the New View of holistic investigation. Aviation SMS will be hit hard in its ability to understand any event, risk or hazard if they fail to apply Dekker investigative strategy. A must read for any ASAP ERC member or investigator.

One person found this helpful

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John Cleary III

Bad flawa not solved by trad reoorting

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 4, 2020

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A wonderful look at how to report flaws and how bad reporting will continue that flaw not fix it.

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M. Rayo

Great introduction to systems thinking

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 5, 2013

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This book is the perfect introduction to systems thinking when trying to understand accidents, improve safety, and make systems more resilient. The examples are great, and the author's perspective comes through loud and clear. He puts in clear relief the "old way" and "new way" of thinking about error, lays out his case for transitioning to the new way, and does it all clearly and concisely. Great read! I'll be buying extra copies to lend to colleagues.

3 people found this helpful

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Carl Kirstein

Very "long" book to explain a simple concept

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2014

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The book feels too long for the content. By the halfway mark I lost interest because every page seemed to be a enforcement of "human error is where a investigation should start, not where it should end". I was hoping to see more examples on which typical system constructions or set ups cause human error.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

David

Inspiring

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is a wonderful book. If you deal with incidents and root cause analysis of any nature and you need to manage the after match problem then this book is for you.

Julie k

Worth the money

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

Brilliant read makes you think

Christopher Skarratt

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 22, 2015

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good book

Miss K E Jones

Human factors explained

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 31, 2013

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Excellent book really gets you thinking in the actual operational context and shifts thinking to the influences on the human as perceived in their real time circumstances

Fernando Teixeira

Important new point of view to understanding the human error ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 21, 2014

Verified Purchase

Important new point of view to understanding the human error. A must for everyone that analyses aeronautical and other type of accidents. A very interesting book of Sidney Dekker.

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