Johan Bergström

Dear readers, in June I went to the fourth Resilience Engineering Symposium to present the paper From Crew Resource Management to Operational Resilience   (just click the link to get the paper) which was written by me and my two colleagues and friends Eder Henriqson and Nicklas Dahlström .  Today I have the pleasure of going to Linköping to present the key ideas of the paper at the yearly meeting for Swedish CRM-instructors organized by the Swedish Human Factors Network . My presentation is not the "we are doing it all wrong"-presentation. Rather a hint at towards where I think we should be heading with our future efforts in team training and team performance assessment. The paper (and presentation) argues for the need to embrace the ideas of complexity theory into our team training programs and to step away from the ideas of cognitive models and behaviourism - models that are not adapted to the complexities of normal work in any high-risk system. The presentation is s

I never thought I would ever publish a clip from Fox News. Well, I was wrong. Below you find a clip in which Fox reports that the number of reported incursions in the American air traffic operation (between aircraft and aircraft, between aircraft and ground vehicle, between aircraft and luggage lying around on the taxi ways) has increased dramatically over the last years. Now, there are (at least) two ways of telling this story, and Fox actually tells both. The first way is to sound terrified and look at it as a trend of decreasing safety (or drift into failure if you like). However there is also a second way. Note how the report turns in a direction of interpreting the increased numbers as a sign of an improved safety climate with controllers more willing to send in their reports without fear of getting punished for their content. In complex high-risk systems we need information to flow about upcoming risks, problems that occur or problems that might occur. Th

Dear readers, Google has launched a new blog layout called "Dynamic Views". I have decided to try it out. This new layout gives you as readers more control over the appearance of the blog. I have chosen it to be in "magazine"-mode per default, but to the top left you as the reader can change to whatever layout you prefer. Google has promised that there will be gadgets also in this new layout so hopefully you will soon be able to follow my twitter feed (bergstrom_johan) on my blog again. The tabs "presentations" and "publications" are still there, on the top left. If you scroll down they disappear, but if you just sweep the top area with your mouse you'll be able to access them. 

Dear readers, I am happy to be able to offer you a one-hour sound file of Sidney Dekker lecturing on the topic of drift into failure (the title of his latest book). The lecture was held at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas  and the sound file embedded here should be credited the organizers of the festival. It is a typical Sidney-lecture, jumping like a good comedian from really deep and serious stories to crazy jokes in a seemingly improvised manner. The outline of the talk ("let me share with you some stories") has some similarities to another really famous lecture that has over the last week been linked to, in memorial to its writer, at uncountably (if that is not a word it should become one) many places online. It is a nice way of building your argument, the narrative technique. "What is this drift-thing all about?" you may wonder considering whether to play the file or not. Well, very briefly, the way Sidney uses the concept is as a contemporary theoretical c

Yes, dear readers, that is right. Only one week remaining until our application window for the Master Program in Human Factors and Systems Safety closes. All of you who intent to apply, make sure to get the application form  signed by your employer and submitted to Alexandra Hertz  before October 15. We are then looking forward to have you over in Lund for the first learning laboratory that takes place on January 16-20.