This succinct but absorbing book covers the main way stations on James Reason’s 40-year journey in pursuit of the nature and varieties of human error. In it he presents an engrossing and very personal perspective, offering the reader exceptional insights, wisdom and wit as only James Reason can. The journey begins with a bizarre absent-minded action slip committed by Professor Reason in the early 1970s - putting cat food into the teapot - and continues up to the present day, conveying his unique perceptions into a variety of major accidents that have shaped his thinking about unsafe acts and latent conditions. A Life in Error charts the development of his seminal and hugely influential work from its original focus into individual cognitive psychology through the broadening of scope to embrace social, organizational and systemic issues. The voyage recounted is both hugely entertaining and educational, imparting a real sense of how James Reason’s ground-breaking theories changed the way we think about human error, and why he is held in such esteem around the world wherever humans interact with technological systems. This book is essential reading for students, academics and safety professionals of all kinds who are interested in avoiding breakdowns that can cause serious damage to people, assets and the environment.
List of Figures
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1 : A Bizarre Beginning
Chapter 2 : Plans, Actions and Consequences
Chapter 3 : Three Performance Levels
Chapter 4 : Absent-Minded Slips and Lapses
Chapter 5 : Individual Differences
Chapter 6 : A Courtroom Application of the SIML
Chapter 7 : The Freudian Slip Revisited
Chapter 8 : Planning Failures
Chapter 9 : Violations
Chapter 10 : Organizational Accidents
Chapter 11 : Organizational Culture : Resisting Change
Chapter 12 : Medical Error
Chapter 13 : Disclosing Error
Chapter 14 : Reviewing the Journey
Postscript
Index
