This is a multi-authored volume addressing the topical subjects of event analysis and the learning organisation within the context of safety management systems.

When an accident occurs, we respond in a number of ways: we look for someone to blame, we try to understand why it happened, we seek to learn and take precautions for the future and we may breathe a sigh of relief and try to forget the accident as quickly as possible.
This book is about how to manage these various responses to an accident. It addresses the question of how to manage the stages of learning from disasters and other accidents and of:
- how data could be collected and analysed to derive the lessons
- how and how far the different and conflicting objectives of judicial procedures and organisational learning could be reconciled.

In the past decade, the issue of organisational shortcomings has emerged as a central focus, but there have been few, if any, proven techniques or management systems for coping with such issues. We are still discovering how to ensure organisations learn and change when faced with accidents. At a wider level we need to address how society learns, how to regulate industry, how to co-ordinate the activities of the many various people responsible for safety within given contexts (eg within transport networks). We must take necessary action, but avoid knee-jerk, expensive and ineffective reactions fuelled by the heat of emotions.

This volume contains a selection of original contributions from internationally reputed scholars in the field of risk management in socio?technical systems with high hazard potential. Its first major section addresses fundamental psychological and socio?technical concepts in the field of risk perception, risk management and learning systems for safety improvement. The second section deals with the variety of procedures for system safety analysis. It covers strategies of analyzing automation problems and of safety culture as well as the analysis of social dynamics in field settings and of field experiments. Its third part then illustrates the utilization of basic concepts and analytic approaches by way of case studies of designing man?machine systems and in various industrial sectors such as intensive care wards, aviation, offfshore oil drilling and chemical industry. In linking basic theoretical conceptual notions and analytic strategies to detailed case studies in the area of hazardous work organizations the volume differs from and complements more theoretical works such as Human Error (J. Reason, 1990) and more general approaches such as New Technologies and Human Error (J. Rasmussen, K. Duncan, J. Leplat, Eds.)

Safety science is now well advanced in analysing risks and safety problems, but what appears to be missing is a better understanding of the methods and strategies which could help to close the gap between analysis and corrective action. Even in organizations such as nuclear plants where thorough and frequent analyses of safety-critical events occur and comprehensive reports are submitted to regulators or super-ordinate utility safety departments, these reports get filed away in a kind of data bank that resembles genuine event report cemeteries. Learning reaches a dead end here. The articles gathered in this collection address safety-oriented systems interventions and the various ways in which experience can be transferred and corrective measures applied to situations that warrant such attention.

For many years, as a direct result of international governmental concern, the nuclear power industry has been at the forefront of industrial safety. This text represents a cross-disciplinary look at the human factors developments in this industry, with wider applications for the entire industrial sector. Technical, psychological and social aspects of industrial safety come under the scrutiny of scientists and engineers from an array of different backgrounds. The contributors are international safety scientists from the USA, Japan and Europe, and their chapters deal with a variety of issues: from theoretical aspects of applicable cultural models, to reviews of actual safety performance in specific plants.

Team-working, partnership, quality circles, works councils, industrial democracy, empowerment - are they distinct and innovative arrangements or is it a case of new wine in old bottles? In the post war period we have seen numerous forms of organizational participation sometimes as experiments, sometimes as negotiated expediency, and sometimes as hype. Different ideas have emerged from different parts of the world, in different industries, at different times with different objectives. In this book four experienced international analysts take the longer view and look at the changing forms of - and changing debates around - orgnaizational participation. The review an extensive literature of experiments and practical experiences through a critical evaluation of the available data to reach balanced conclusions about the importance and utility of this concept for organizations now and in the future.

Team-working, partnership, quality circles, works councils, industrial democracy, empowerment - are they distinct and innovative arrangements or is it a case of old wine in new bottles? In this book four experienced international analysts take the longer view and look at the changing forms of - and changing debates around - organizational participation.

They review an extensive literature of experiments and practical experiences through a critical evaluation of the available data to reach balanced conclusions about the importance and utility of this concept for organizations now and in the future.

Die Liberalisierung in der Volksrepublik China wahrend der Dekade vor den schreck lichen Ereignissen im Juni 1989 war nicht zuletzt durch die Erfahrungen im Umgang mit neuen Formen grenzuberschreitenden Wirtschaftshandelns beeinflusst: Chinesisch-aus landischen Gemeinschaftsunternehmen. Wie sich allenthalben als Folge der Entwick lungen in Osteuropa zeigt, sind und bleiben Joint Ventures wichtige Instrumente inter nationaler wirtschaftlicher Zusammenarbeit. Veroffentlichungen aus jungster Zeit ma chen deutlich, dass dies auch nach den Vorfallen am Platz des Himmlischen Friedens fur die Volksrepublik China zutrifft. Der vorliegende Band gibt die Einsichten eines von der Stiftung Volkswagenwerk un terstutzten Forschungsvorhabens wieder. Seine wesentlichen Ergebnisse haben trotz veranderter politischer Umstande in China nichts an Aktualitat und Relevanz fur alle diejenigen verloren, die sich mit Joint Ventures in China befassen, sei es als Praktiker oder als Wissenschaftler. Abgesehen von typisch chinesischen Besonderheiten sind diese Ergebnisse von allgemeinem Belang in der Gestaltung von Joint Ventures. Das Forschungsvorhaben entstand in enger Zusammenarbeit mit Vertretern unter schiedlicher Disziplinen der Shanghai Jiao Tong Universitat (insbesondere Prof. Pan Bowen -Industrial Foreign Trade -und Prof. XuJiliang -Human Resource Management) und der Technischen Universitat Berlin. Beide Universitaten haben grosse Anstrengun gen unternommen. Der Erfolg des Forschungsvorhabens hing aber auch von den Mittel zuwendungen der Stiftung Volkswagenwerk ab. Zum Mitarbeiterteam der Technischen Universitat Berlin gehorten: - Rechtsanwalt Klaus Jakubowski (K. J. ) (Rechtswissenschaften) - Dr. Sophia Scharpf (S. S. ) (Politikwissenschaften) - Dipl. -Ing. Christian A. Schuchardt (C. S. ) (Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Marketing) - Prof. Dr. VolkerTrommsdorff (V. T."

Nicola Beelitz von Busse schlagt eine Brucke zwischen Psychologie und Betriebswirtschaftslehre und untersucht das Verstandnis von Innovation, das Zustandekommen von Innovation und Merkmale von Innovationsprozessen aus der Akteursperspektive, wobei sie Moglichkeiten und Grenzen des Innovationsmanagements aufzeigt.

Nuclear power operations throughout the world face increasing international scrutiny from monitoring groups, government agencies, and the general public. Changing technologies, regulations, and public attitudes about this power source have given rise to new challenges and possible solutions within the industry.Emerging Demands for the Safety of Nuclear Power Operations: Challenge and Response is the third publication developed from a longstanding relationship between the Institute of Nuclear Safety System in Japan, concerned with immediate practical safety topics, and the Berlin University of Technology, which focuses on combining safety-related research with practical approaches to safety in high-hazard industries. It addresses technical, psychological, and social aspects of industrial safety that come under the scrutiny of scientists and engineers from an array of backgrounds. The book presents a cross-disciplinary, state-of-the-art look at the latest human factors developments in the nuclear industry, with wider applications for the entire industrial sector.; Expert contributors explore issues in four areas: emerging challenges, analytic tools, response within the industry, and p