From theory to practice: itinerary of Reasons’ Swiss Cheese Model

Justin Larouzée (1) , Franck Guarnieri (1)

1 CRC - Centre de recherche sur les Risques et les Crises

Since the early 1990s, the Swiss Cheese Model (SCM) of the English psychologist James Reason has established itself as a reference model in the etiology, investigation or prevention of organizational accidents in many productive systems (transportation, energy, healthcare …). Based on the observation that it’s still today widely used, this article intends to revert to the history and the theoretical background of the SCM. By doing so, the article focuses on the collaboration between the psychologist (James Reason) and a nuclear engineer (John Wreathall) who happened to be at the origin of the creation and evolution of SCM. The methodology is based on an exhaustive literature review of Reason's work and the interviews of Reason and Wreathall carried out in 2014. The study suggests that the success of the model is not so much due to appropriation of the work of the psychologist by the industrial community but to a complex process of co-production of knowledge and theories. To conclude, we try to figure out whether the SCM still has a contemporary interest in accident prevention or explanation

Mots clés: Fukushima

Domaines: Gestion des risques et des crises

Justin Larouzée, Franck Guarnieri. From theory to practice: itinerary of Reasons’ Swiss Cheese Model. ESREL 2015, European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA), Sep 2015, Zürich, Switzerland. pp.817-824 - ISBN 978-1-138-02879-1, ⟨10.1201/b19094-110⟩. ⟨hal-01207359⟩