(Report Documentation Page for the UC Berkeley report "Aircraft Operations at Sea: The Challenges of High Reliability Performance," prepared for the Office of Naval Research, 1988)
In 1984, Berkeley scholars Todd LaPorte, Karlene Roberts and Gene Rochlin began a project to investigate organizations responsible for managing technologies that are "beneficial, costly and hazardous." Their field research on aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, and the air traffic control system led them identify a distinctive set of factors that allowed these organizations to achieve exceptional levels of reliability. To paraphrase the title of an early HRO article by LaPorte and Consolini, these organizations appeared to "work in practice, but not in theory." So the team set out to theorize high reliability organizations (HROs) and discovered a unique set of principles underpinning their performance. Other scholars enthusiastically took up the agenda and applied it to fire fighting, health care, electrical energy grids and other organizations.
CCRM held a conference on October 23-25, 2024 to celebrate the 40 year anniversary of HRO research and to discuss the next chapter in this valuable research agenda.
