Human Resources Management and Learning from Crisis

Organizations face turbulent environments where accidents happen, usually because warning signals such as near misses and incidents have been ignored. Nevertheless some organizations are capable of facing risk environments and learn from unexpected events through a mindfulness infrastructure, being known as High Reliability Organizations [HROs]. Accordingly to Weick and Sutcliffe 92007) HROs' success is linked to the implementation of a mindfulness infrastructure which has five principles: 1) preoccupation with failure; 2) reluctance to simplify interpretations; 3) sensitivity to operations; 4) Commitment to resilience; and 5) deference to expertise. In the human resources management literature, practices associated to safety mostly appear as individual practices. More recently, research on the link between HRM and organizational performance is considering the process perspective (e.g., strength of the HRM system, Bowen & Ostroff, 2004). This paper intends to present a model that considers both content and process of the HRM system in fostering the creation of a mindfulness infrastructure.