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Improving resilience in high-risk organizations: principles for the design of innovative training situations

Simon Flandin (Department of Adult Education, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland)
Germain Poizat (Department of Adult Education, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland)
Marc Durand (Department of Adult Education, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland)

Development and Learning in Organizations

ISSN: 1477-7282

Article publication date: 5 March 2018

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Abstract

Purpose

Safety and organizational research indicates that fostering resilience in organizations is a promising way for improving safety, albeit concrete means to implement resilience are still lacking, especially in the educational field. The purpose of this paper is to propose four principles for training design derived from past and current studies the authors conduct in high-risk organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

Training for resilience is considered within an enactive approach of human activity building on its properties of autonomy, structural coupling, self-organization, emergence, sensemaking, and metastability.

Findings

The article describes four educational design principles aiming at improving individual, collective, and organizational resilience: encourage mimetic experiences; pay attention to attention and concernedness; perturb and turn into an event; support participatory-sensemaking and collective sensemaking.

Research limitations/implications

The training program the authors propose may be challenging to assess. Besides, the most durable solutions to improve safety through resilience are to be found at the crossroad between organizational design and training/development policies. Future research should determine the implementability criteria which are likely to support the use of the principles the authors propose, and contribute to enrich this educational foundation.

Originality/value

Education and training are conceived herein as high-order means to improve safety through resilience in high-risk organizations, fostering the capacity of the operators and organization to develop efficiently and in the long run. We provide independent but complementary training principles that cannot be hierarchized, but that can be locally prioritized in organizations.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Funding: Portions of this research were funded by the Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture.

Citation

Flandin, S., Poizat, G. and Durand, M. (2018), "Improving resilience in high-risk organizations: principles for the design of innovative training situations", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 9-12. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-03-2017-0027

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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