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On the rationale of resilience in the domain of safety: A literature review

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Author

Summary, in English

Resilience is becoming a prevalent agenda in safety research and organisational practice. In this study we examine how the peer-reviewed safety science literature (a) formulates the rationale behind the study of resilience; (b) constructs resilience as a scientific object; and (c) constructs and locates the resilient subject. The results suggest that resilience engineering scholars typically motivate the need for their studies by referring to the inherent complexities of modern socio-technical systems; complexities that make these systems inherently risky. The object of resilience then becomes the capacity to adapt to such emerging risks in order to guarantee the success of the inherently risky system. In the material reviewed, the subject of resilience is typically the individual, either at the sharp end or at higher managerial levels. The individual is called-upon to adapt in the face of risk to secure the continuous performance of the system. Based on the results from how resilience has been introduced in safety sciences we raise three ethical questions for the field to address: (1) should resilience be seen as people thriving despite of, or because of, risk?; (2) should resilience theory form a basis for moral judgement?; and finally (3) how much should resilience be approached as a trait of the individual?

Department/s

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

131-141

Publication/Series

Reliability Engineering & System Safety

Volume

141

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • High reliability theory
  • Normal accidents
  • Accident prevention
  • Resilience engineering
  • Resilience

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0951-8320