Organizing for high reliability: Processes of collective mindfulness

High Reliability Organizations (HROs) have been treated as exotic outliers in main- stream organizational theory because of their unique potentials for catastrophic con- sequences and interactively complex technology. We argue that HROS are more central to the mainstream because they provide a unique window into organizational effectiveness under trying conditions. HROS enact a distinctive though not unique set of cognitive processes directed at proxies for failure, tendencies to simplify, sensitivity to operations, capabilities for resilience, and temptations to overstructure the system. Taken together these processes induce a state of collective mindfulness that creates a rich awareness of discriminatory detail and facilitates the discovery and correction of errors capable of escalation into catastrophe. Though distinctive, these processes are not unique since they are a dormant infrastructure for process improvement in all organizations. Analysis of HROs suggests that inertia is not indigenous to organizing, that routines are effective because of their variation, that learning may be a byproduct of mindfulness, and that garbage cans may be safer than hierarchies.