Futurama

OK - I'm on a high - I have a dissertation topic (I THINK) - so I'm in celebration mode!!  Today, I read 19 or so articles specifically on near miss incidents and near miss management.  There was one interesting article about hindsight bias (Barach & Small, 2000).  I had not heard of this before and was unsure of it's meaning in the arena of accident investigation.  Basically - it means like, I should have seen it coming!  After you have all the facts in hand, your thought is that the consequences of a chain of events is a no-brainer = hindsight bias.  Interesting concept.

Anyway - I quit work at 11:15 PM this evening and decided to review my notes from everything I read...only I went back to stuff I read during Winter Break.  Lo - the inspiration came in BOLD REDDED TEXT...  in the work by Zacharatos, Barling, & Iverson (2005).  This is my annotation after reading their work: 
   

The authors concluded that high performance work systems affect safety and the relationship is mediated by trust in management and perceived safety climate.  Job satisfaction and organizational justice play a mediating role between high performance work systems and organizational performance.  Authors state area for further research is job satisfaction influence on individual and group safety.

So, what role does job satisfaction play on near miss reporting?....this could be doable!!  Occupational safety has so few studies done.  Why is that?  Are companies too paranoid to expose their data?  Maybe the majority of people who know how to control mayhem are too gainfully employed controlling mayhem.  Expertise is a marketable skill.  Near miss incident analysis is supposed to reduce hazards.  Does having job satisfaction increase motivation to risk personal, departmental, and and institutional consequences for reporting near miss incidents?  In theaviation industry, they no longer leave it up to a matter of good citizenship - they use black boxes and surveillence technologies to make people accountable.  The nuclear power industry uses this model to a lesser degree.  I will research more today and get to work on a prospectus.

Refences

Barach, P., & Small, S. D. (2000).  Reporting and preventing medical mishaps: Lessons from non-medical near miss reporting systems.  British Medical Journal, 320(7237), 759-763.  Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/docview/203974452?accountid=35812

Zacharatos, A., Barling, J., & Iverson, R. D. (2005). High-Performance Work Systems and Occupational Safety. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(1), 77-93. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.90.1.77