Strategies for dealing with resistance to recommendations from accident investigations

Jonas Lundberg (1) , Carl Rollenhagen (2) , Erik Hollnagel (3, 4) , Amy Rankin (5)

1 Department of Science and Technology
2 Department of Philosophy
3 CRC - Centre de recherche sur les Risques et les Crises
4 Institute of Public Health
5 Department of Computer and Information Science - Linköping University

Accident investigation reports usually lead to a set of recommendations for change. These recommendations are, however, sometimes resisted for reasons such as various aspects of ethics and power. When accident investigators are aware of this, they use several strategies to overcome the resistance. This paper describes strategies for dealing with four different types of resistance to change. The strategies were derived from qualitative analysis of 25 interviews with Swedish accident investigators from seven application domains. The main contribution of the paper is a better understanding of effective strategies for achieving change associated with accident investigation.

Mots clés: Accident investigation; Remedial actions; Safety culture

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Gestion des risques et des crises

Jonas Lundberg, Carl Rollenhagen, Erik Hollnagel, Amy Rankin. Strategies for dealing with resistance to recommendations from accident investigations. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2012, 45, pp.455-467. ⟨10.1016/j.aap.2011.08.014⟩. ⟨hal-00655270⟩