In 1988, a report commissioned by the US Navy observed that “when organizations operate technologies that are beneficial, costly and hazardous, they are pressed to take on goals of failure-free operations. There is a class of organizations that have accepted such goals and nearly always achieve them.” The findings of this study, and similar ones in nuclear power plants and electric grids, demonstrated that certain organizational features are associated with sustained reliability. The lessons of these “high-reliability organizations” are now in wide application from anesthesia and oil exploration to aviation and wildland fire response. This presentation will briefly introduce high-reliability organizing and its various fundamental concepts and applications.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Peter Martelli’s research focuses on organizational errors and the interdisciplinary application of models, such as High Reliability Organizing (HRO), to promote system safety and reliability. He has worked on various aspects of these issues across industries, including healthcare, wildland fire and emergency response, oil exploration, and civil and industrial infrastructure. He is an Associate Professor of Healthcare Administration and of Strategy & International Business (by courtesy) at Suffolk University, and an Advisory Board member and former Co-Director of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California-Berkeley.