Understanding the conditions under which variability in performance may arise, and the processes related to its emergence, gives us insight into the development of techniques for improving the quality of performance. Variability in Human Performance details the scientific and the practical implications of human performance variability by providing a broad perspective on how and why such variability occurs across a number of disciplinary domains. The text takes an approach that rests upon the idea of context, or design, specificity in performance, namely that variability in performance is closely referenced to design factors in the environment in which performance is occurring. An exploration of the link between variability and related processes, the book introduces a comprehensive framework for understanding human performance variability, presented in terms of how human control of behavior is closely tied to design factors in the performance environment. The authors introduce empirical evidence, as well as practical examples and application areas, in support of this framework. The book begins with coverage of neurobiological and biomechanical basis of movement variability, then examines rich and extensive empirical evidence available for context specificity in cognitive performance and learning, as a basis for cognitive performance variability. The book then reviews the evidence for context specificity in: Student learning Displaced feedback conditions Human error behavior Affective performance Social and team performance The authors also explore work performance as influenced by complex sociotechnical systems and as a basis for performance variability, applying control systems concepts to an interpretation of the nature and basis of performance variability in all of these domains. They conclude by taking an evolutionary perspective on the origins and behavioral significance of human performance variability. The book then provides strategies on how individuals, groups, and organizations can significantly reduce variability in human performance that often leads to systems failures.

The first edition of Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care and Patient Safety took the medical and ergonomics communities by storm with in-depth coverage of human factors and ergonomics research, concepts, theories, models, methods, and interventions and how they can be applied in health care. Other books focus on particular human factors and ergonomics issues such as human error or design of medical devices or a specific application such as emergency medicine. This book draws on both areas to provide a compendium of human factors and ergonomics issues relevant to health care and patient safety. The second edition takes a more practical approach with coverage of methods, interventions, and applications and a greater range of domains such as medication safety, surgery, anesthesia, and infection prevention. New topics include: work schedules error recovery telemedicine workflow analysis simulation health information technology development and design patient safety management Reflecting developments and advances in the five years since the first edition, the book explores medical technology and telemedicine and puts a special emphasis on the contributions of human factors and ergonomics to the improvement of patient safety and quality of care. In order to take patient safety to the next level, collaboration between human factors professionals and health care providers must occur. This book brings both groups closer to achieving that goal.

Despite preemptive preparations, disasters can and do occur. Whether natural disasters, catastrophic accidents, or terrorist attacks, the risk cannot be completely eliminated. A carefully prepared response is your best defense. Handbook of Emergency Response: A Human Factors and Systems Engineering Approach presents practical advice and guidelines on how to plan the coordinated execution of emergency response. A useful tool to mitigate logistical problems that often follow disasters or extreme events, the core of this guide is the role of human factors in emergency response project management. The handbook provides a systematic structure for communication, cooperation, and coordination. It highlights what must be done and when, and how to identify the resources required for each effort. The book tackles cutting-edge research in topics such as evacuation planning, chemical agent sensor placement, and riverflow prediction. It offers strategies for establishing an effective training program for first responders and insightful advice in managing waste associated with disasters. Managing a project in the wake of a tragedy is complicated and involves various emotional, sentimental, reactive, and chaotic responses. This is the time that a structured communication model is most needed. Having a guiding model for emergency response can help put things in proper focus. This book provides that model. It guides you through planning for and responding to various emergencies and in overcoming the challenges in these tasks.

Responding to the public concern caused by recent hospital scandals and accounts of unintended harm to patients, this author draws on her experience of analysing the health care systems of over a dozen countries and examines whether greater regulation has increased patient safety and health care quality. The book adopts a new approach to mapping developments in health care systems in Europe, North America and Australia and pieces together evidence of which regulatory strategies and mechanisms work well to ensure safer patient care. It identifies the regulatory bodies, the regulatory principles and the implementation strategies adopted to improve governance in health care systems and suggests a conceptual framework for responsive regulation. The book will be of interest to government actors, health care professionals and medico-legal scholars.

Around the third millennium B.C. in the Fertile Crescent, a world-system with a single world-economy, covering very vast regions, began to form. Mesopotamia became the center of this world-system. This was possible due to the development of common commercial law and logical competence there. The expansion of the world-economy during the Silk Road period from the 4th century B.C. to the early 5th century A.D. across various countries of Eurasia was accompanied by the spread of logical competence, first formed in Mesopotamia, as a mechanism of legal hermeneutics to draw logical conclusions without fallacies. This competence was simultaneously comprehended in different cultures connected by the Great Silk Road - in ancient Greek logic (4th - 2nd centuries B.C.); ancient Chinese proto-logic (5th - 2nd centuries B.C.); Judaic logical hermeneutics (1st - 2nd centuries A.D.); and in Indian-Buddhist logic (2nd - 6th centuries A.D.). The book analyzes the emergence of logic and its spread and early forms of its reflection. Consequently, logical competence is seen not as an innate ability, but as a social practice first established in Mesopotamia. Logic as a science became possible only after the development of logical competence as an accepted social practice. On the other hand, this view is a non-Marxist assessment of the early form of the world-system, centered on international law and logical competence, which made the world-economy and international trade then possible.

What is the relationship between the social performance of companies and their financial performance? More colloquially, can a firm effectively attend to both people and profits as it conducts its business? This question has been investigated in no fewer than 95 empirical studies published since 1972. The authors have assembled a compendium of this research to give researchers and practitioners alike a broad overview of these 95 studies and a systematic database detailing the content of each one. This book provides a comprehensive portrait of this research literature. It begins with a broad orientation to the literature, exploring why the link between social and financial performance has been subject to continual inquiry and often heated debate. The authors then present an integrated overview of the 95 studies. Through the charts and tables, the authors illuminate the nature of the studies conducted; the data samples selected for investigation; the ways in which financial and social performance have been measured; and the overall tally of results.

This unique book expands the contribution of aviation psychology and human factors to the aviation industry within the Asia Pacific region, with participation from many other parts of the globe, and key local and international experts, developing the safety, efficiency and viability of the industry. It is a forward-looking work, providing new strategies for psychology and human factors to increase the safe and effective functioning of aviation organisations and systems, pertinent to both civil and military operations. This is the formal refereed proceedings of The Fifth Australian Aviation Psychology Symposium, Manly Beach, Sydney 2000. The symposium had a diverse range of contributions and Development Workshops, bringing together practitioners from aviation psychology and human factors, flight operations management, safety managers, pilots, cabin crew, air traffic controllers, engineering and maintenance personnel, air safety investigators, staff from manufacturers and regulatory bodies, and applied aviation industry researchers and academics. This book will be of interest to anyone involved in human factors, safety systems or aviation psychology within both the civil and military aviation industry.

In It Should Never Happen Again, Dr Mike Lauder questions the value of public inquiries. Every day, we hear about another inquiry being set up, or why the last one failed to deliver the hoped for outcomes. A great deal of time and taxpayers' money is spent on inquiries and even more on implementing their recommendations, but the author suggests that those conducting inquiries might be considered (by their own test) criminally negligent in the way they do so and that it is no surprise that they do not lead to the learning they should. The focus of Mike Lauder's research is the gaps between what is known, what knowledge is used by practitioners and those who judge them. He contends that the difference between the judicial perspective and that of practitioners who are judged by the inquiry process creates barriers that impede others from learning. Crucially, inquiry outcomes do not assist the leadership of organisations to improve risk governance. It Should Never Happen Again is based on research into high profile public inquiries and presidential commissions in the UK, the USA, Continental Europe, and elsewhere. Embracing issues ranging from terrorist attacks to pollution, fire and air disasters; criminal cases; banking and bribery scandals; and the state of public services, Mike Lauder contrasts the judicial perspective of those who inquire, the academic perspective of those who know and the practical perspective of those who are required to act, and offers new models for understanding risk and its governance.

The application of probability and statistics to an ever-widening number of life-decisions serves to reproduce, reinforce, and widen disparities in the quality of life that different groups of people can enjoy. As a critical technology assessment, the ways in which bad luck early in life increase the probability that hardship and loss will accumulate across the life course are illustrated. Analysis shows the ways in which individual decisions, informed by statistical models, shape the opportunities people face in both market and non-market environments. Ultimately, this book challenges the actuarial logic and instrumental rationalism that drives public policy and emphasizes the role that the mass media play in justifying its expanded use. Although its arguments and examples take as their primary emphasis the ways in which these decision systems affect the life chances of African-Americans, the findings are also applicable to a broad range of groups burdened by discrimination.

Human error is now the main cause of aircraft accidents. However, in many cases the pilot simply falls into a trap that has been left for him/her by the poor design of the flight deck. This book addresses the human factors issues pertinent to the design of modern flight decks. Comprising of invited chapters from internationally recognised experts in human factors and flight deck design, contributions span the world of industry, government research establishments and academia. The book brings together the practical experience of professionals across the human factors and flight deck design disciplines to provide a single, all-encompassing volume. Divided into two main parts, part one of the book examines: the benefits of human engineering; flight deck design process; head down display design; head-up display design; auditory warning systems; flight control systems, control inceptors and aircraft handling qualities; flight deck automation; and human-computer interaction on the flight deck and anthropometrics for flight deck design. Part two is concerned with flight deck evaluation - the human factors evaluation of flight decks; human factors in flight test and the regulatory viewpoint Of interest to all human factors professionals operating in high technology, high-risk dynamic industries as well as those engaged directly in aerospace activities, the book will also be of key importance to engineers with an interest in human factors for flight deck design, academics and third year and post-graduate human factors/ergonomics and psychology students.

Australia has an enviable record for airline safety - No one has ever died in an accident involving a commercial jet aircraft in Australia. The reasons behind this have been the source of much speculation and theories tend to focus on issues related to the natural environment and even luck. However, with human error being present in arguably 100% of aircraft accidents, it seems reasonable that a good safety record is at least partly the consequence of human intervention. This text uses Australian aviation as a case study of a safe system to explore the interactions between the natural, operational and human environments. Based on doctoral research including a major survey of pilot and air traffic controller perceptions, the book is unusual in that it looks at positive examples in safety rather than taking the traditional reactive approach to safety deficiencies.

Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare argues that traditional modes of bioethics are proving incommensurable with burgeoning biotechnologies and consequently, emerging subjectivities. Drawn from diverse disciplines, this volume works toward a new mode of discourse in bioethics, offering a critique of the current norms and constraints under which Western healthcare operates. The contributions imagine new, less paternalistic, terms by which bioethics might proceed - terms that do not resort to exclusively Western models of liberal humanism or to the logic of neoliberal economies. It is argued that in this way, we can begin to develop an ethical vocabulary that does justice to the challenges of our age. Bringing together theorists, practitioners and clinicians to present a wide variety of related disciplinary concerns and perspectives on bioethics, this volume challenges the underlying assumptions that continue to hold sway in the ethics of medicine and health sciences.

Knowledge management goes beyond data and information capture in computerized health records and ordering systems; it seeks to leverage the experiences of all who interact in healthcare to enhance care delivery, teamwork, and organizational learning. Knowledge management - if envisioned thoughtfully - takes a systemic approach to implementation that includes the embodiment of a learning culture. Knowledge is then used to support that culture and the knowledge workers within it to encourage them to share what they know, thusly enabling their peers, their organizations and ultimately their patients to benefit from their experience to proactively dismantle hierarchy and encourage sharing about what works, and what doesn't to focus efforts on improvement. Knowledge Management in Healthcare draws on relevant business, clinical and health administration literature plus the analysis of discussions with a variety of clinical, administrative, leadership, patient and information experts. The result is a book that will inform thinking on knowledge access needs to mitigate potential failures, design lasting improvements and support the sharing of what is known to enable work towards attaining high reliability. It can be used as a general tool for leaders and individuals wishing to devise and implement a knowledge-sharing culture in their institution, design innovative activities supporting transparency and communication to strengthen existing programs intended to enhance knowledge sharing behaviours and contribute to high quality, safe care.

It is very easy for organizations to ignore or overlook the impact of social and commercial change-of increased pressure to deliver profit (above all else) and of transformation in the ways in which we are now working-on the mental health and, consequently, the performance of their employees. And yet there is plenty of evidence that in many workplaces, performance is down, stress is up and professional employees are struggling to balance their home and work lives. This collection, while looking at individuals, places the spotlight on organizational initiatives to support the development of attitudes, values, character and behaviors in employees. The aim of these initiatives is to increase our resilience to those experiences and events which impact on performance. There is a particular focus on managerial and professional jobs where employee discretion and commitment are critical. The Fulfilling Workplace extends the themes developed in early titles in the Psychological and Behavioral Aspects of Risk Series deeper into organizations; to explore the organization's role in coming to grips both with human frailties and toxic workplaces-both destructive to individual and organizational health.

For boards and executives, high-quality and transparent information is critical to allow effective decision-making. Emerging risks are increasingly challenging issues, both in terms of threats and growth opportunities; not least since the science pertaining to these risks tends to be contested. Emerging Risks: A Strategic Management Guide restores the constructive dialogue between the business professional and the expert/scientist community, essential if companies are to anticipate, plan ahead and exploit leading-edge ideas. It provides insights into some of the major emerging risks of the 21st century and then guides organizations on how to approach and manage those risks proactively in the wake of new regulation, governance and enterprise-wide risk management. The topics covered include: nanotechnologies, covering the industrial revolution of the 21st Century; new information and communication technologies (NICT), discussing the infrastructure of the future; electromagnetic fields (EMF) and their debated health impact; chemical substances/REACH, a regulation with major economic and environmental stakes and an example of emerging risk management; biological risk and its on-going need for international surveillance; supply chain, a top management priority; and country risk, for which security and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are growing issues. The authors assess and propose a process for managing emerging risks and the strategies that need to be put in place, drawing on examples of best practice.

A quality product or service is the successful and profitable outcome of organising resources, as judged by the final customer. Every business unit needs processes in order to do this effectively; and all processes must be documented so that achievements can be measured and future improvements planned and implemented. Pharmaceutical Process Design and Management takes a step-wise approach to process management. It presents the various elements comprising a process (man, machine, materials, method and environment); it looks at quality control and quality assurance, tools for quality improvements and ways of structuring a process into discrete, fully accountable elements; it proposes that for processes to run successfully, all operators must be the initial problem-solvers; finally, it illustrates how, with the right tools, every problem can be broken down into solvable elements. Learn how to deploy a science and risk-based approach to pharmaceutical manufacturing, by taking a fundamental approach to process design and management and, as a consequence, keep your customers satisfied and your profits healthy.

From the Foreword by Captain Daniel Maurino, ICAO: '...Air Traffic Control...will remain a technology-intensive system. People (controllers) must harmoniously interact with technology to contribute to achieve the aviation system's goals of safe and efficient transportation of passengers and cargo...This book...considers human error and human factors from a contemporary and operational perspective and discusses the parts as well as the whole...I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.' The motivation for writing this book comes from the author's long standing belief that the needs of Air Traffic Service personnel are inadequately represented in the aviation literature. There are few references to air traffic control in many of the books written for pilots and about pilots and this is also observed at the main international conferences. In line with the ICAO syllabus for human factors training for air traffic controllers, the book covers the main issues in air traffic control, with regard to human performance: physiology including stress, fatigue and shift work problems; psychology with emphasis on human error and its management, social psychology including issues of communication and working in teams, the environment including ergonomic principles and working with new technologies and hardware and software issues including the development of documentation and procedures and a study of the changes brought about by advanced technologies. Throughout the text there are actual examples taken from the air traffic control environment to illustrate the issues discussed. A full bibliography is included for those who want to read beyond these issues. It has been written for all in air traffic services, from ab initio to the boardroom; it is important that the men and women in senior management positions have some knowledge and awareness of the fundamental problems that limit and enhance human performance.

Intense pressures pose considerable challenges to executives striving to succeed in an environment of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Today's leaders are constantly fighting to make sense of their changing worlds and to make the right decisions for themselves, their teams and their business. Yet resilience is not a given. It is a dynamic competency that can be cultivated and improved and there is not just one single way to improve the resilience of a manager but actually many different ways on different levels. The author differentiates between personal resilience, the 'resilience field' and aspects of resilient leadership so that leaders can grasp how each relates to the other and how each can be used to enhance personal and collective resilience. He lays out concrete, practical approaches for overcoming obstacles to the development of resilience at all levels-extending the capacity of the individual leader, teams, group, and organizations to sustain themselves in the face of adversity. Leaders can follow the practical steps and strategies, outlined in this guide, to enhance their capacity to withstand hardships and adversity and create an environment in which people within an organization can thrive and grow. The guidance and strategy draws from a model of resilience focused on (a) fundamental human needs as confirmed by neuroscience and (b) the consequences of not meeting these needs. These two pillars of resilience define a leader's capacity to handle change, conflict, and 'dysfunctional beliefs'- the barriers and sticking points that undermine a leader's optimal business performance.

With increasing recognition of the international market in health professionals and the impact of globalism on regulation, the governance of the health workforce is moving towards greater public engagement and increased transparency. This book discusses the challenges posed by these processes such as improved access to health services and how structures can be reformed so that good practice is upheld and quality of service and patient safety are ensured. With contributions from regulators, academics, lawyers and health professionals, this book presents arguments from multiple perspectives. Of global relevance, it brings together concerns about access, quality and safety within the framework of the health workforce governance continuum and will be of interest to policy makers, regulators, health professionals, academics legal practitioners, insurers, students and researchers.

Krishnan describes military applications of neuroscience research and emerging neurotechnology with relevance to the conduct of armed conflict and law enforcement. This work builds upon literature by scholars such as Moreno and Giordano and fills an existing gap, not only in terms of reviewing available and future neurotechnologies and relevant applications, but by discussing how the military pursuit of these technologies fits into the overall strategic context. The first to sketch future neurowarfare by looking at its potentials as well as its inherent limitations, this book's main theme is how military neuroscience will enhance and possibly transform both classical psychological operations and cyber warfare. Its core argument is that nonlethal strategies and tactics could become central to warfare in the first half of the twenty-first century. This creates both humanitarian opportunities in making war less bloody and burdensome as well as some unprecedented threats and dangers in terms of preserving freedom of thought and will in a coming age where minds can be manipulated with great precision.

In our increasingly globally interconnected world, understanding and appreciating the sociocultural context within which individuals make their decisions is critical to developing successful partnerships. The collection of chapters in this volume illustrates how advances in information and social media technologies, as well as modeling and simulation tools, combined with the social sciences, can be leveraged to better understand how sociocultural context influences decision making. The chapters in this volume were contributed by leading experts from academia, industry, and government and provide: Insights into cross-cultural decision making based on recent international events, with grounding in an historical context Discussions of cutting-edge modeling techniques used today by professionals across multiple organizations and agencies Descriptions of specific cross-cultural decision making tools designed for use by laypeople and professionals Case studies on the role of cross-cultural decision making grounded in current events and (in many cases) military applications.

In recent years, for reasons connected to the organization of the industry, technical developments, and major safety concerns, rail human factors has grown in importance at an international level. Despite its importance, however, supporting literature has been largely restricted to specialist journal publications and technical reports. Rail Human Factors addresses this imbalance by providing the first fully comprehensive overview of the area. The volume includes contributions from leading ergonomists, psychologists, sociologists, management scientists and engineers whose common theme is to investigate, understand and design for people on the railways, including staff, passengers and the general public. Every area of ergonomics/human factors is covered: physical design of work and equipment in maintenance; cognitive ergonomics in driving, signalling and control; organizational and social ergonomics in the way teams are formed, plans are made and organizations are structured and run. Topics covered include: c Systems views of rail human factors c Driver models and performance c Train and cab design c Network and train control systems, including ERTMS c Signals and signal c SPADS c Signalling and control center design c Signaller performance c Control center interfaces c Workload, situation awareness, team working c Human error and reliability c Timetabling and planning c Maintenance planning and work c Safety climate and safety culture c Passenger comfort and behaviour c Station design c Public information systems c Level crossings c Trespass and vandalism c Ergonomics standards and guidelines c Human Factors integration The book is the definitive guide for all those concerned with making railways safer, more reliable, of higher quality and more efficient. It will be essential reading for policy-makers, researchers and industry around the world.

Corporate Risk and Governance addresses corporate risk management and governance requirements affecting large organizations in all industry sectors and countries. The book strongly advocates implementation of Corporate Governance Codes, ISO 31000 Risk Management, ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management and PAS 200 Crisis Management but warns against treating any standard or model slavishly, as if it can offer easy salvation or a simple route to a risk nirvana. Alan Waring challenges many hallowed beliefs, attitudes and practices that continue to hamper the delivery of effective Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and thereby good governance. Those boardroom and corporate cultures that are complacent about risk exposures and risk management or, worse, encourage 'chancers' and a 'what can we get away with' attitude, are examined in depth along with what is required to embed a culture of responsible risk-taking. Some 75 cases from around the world provide graphic examples and lessons to be learned. Although the text includes some summary practical guidance, this book is designed primarily as a thinking aid rather than a risk management cookbook. It is something to encourage better informed risk-decision making; a more informed view of enterprise risk exposures, control and mitigation issues and an awareness of boardroom and corporate culture issues and their impact on effective ERM.

Previous studies conducted within the aviation industry have examined a multitude of crucial aspects such as policy, airline service quality, and revenue management. An extensive body of literature has also recognised the importance of decision-making in aviation, with the focus predominantly on pilots and air traffic controllers. Understanding Decision-Making Processes in Airline Operations Control focuses instead on an area largely overlooked: an airline's Operations Control Centre (OCC). This serves as the nerve centre of the airline and is responsible for decision-making with respect to operational control of an airline's daily schedules. The environment within an OCC is extremely intense and a key role of controllers is to make decisions that facilitate the airline's recovery from frequent, highly complex, and often multiple disruptions. As such, decision-making in this domain is critical to minimise the operational, commercial and financial impact resulting from disruptions. The book examines many aspects of individual decision-making in airline operations, and addresses the deficiencies found by presenting to the reader an examination of the relationships among situation awareness, information completeness, experience, expertise, decision considerations and decision alternatives in OCCs. The text utilises a multiple case study approach and proposes a number of relevant and important implications for OCC management. Practical outcomes highlight the need for enhancing training programs enabling existing controllers to readily identify and classify elements of situation awareness and decision considerations as a means of improving the decision-making process. They also draw attention to the need for airline OCCs to understand the extent to which industry experience and expertise of controllers is important in the selection of future staff.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.