Nick Mcdonald’s scientific contributions

Mindful organising highlights the commitment to recognise latent failures, deviances, and surprises that may foreshadow the development of larger unwanted events. This social process is fed by extensive real-time communication and interaction by front-line operators. Safety is therefore achieved through these human processes and relationships. But what should an organisation do in practice to be mindful? We explored this in the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC), an Air Traffic Control (ATC) organisation, which has reported for many years high-standards of safety (i.e. very low numbers of serious incidents). A single-case study approach was used to support the in-depth description and understanding of the phenomenon within its real-life context. The mindful organising principles have been followed to design the protocol for data collection and its multiple sources of information (semi-structured interviews, observations, workshop, documents, analysis of the current tools in use). Data triangulation and the use of a software for Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) have supported the achievement of data reliability and validity. The results provide a picture of the current safety mindful organising in place, assessing the way safety procedures and processes are advanced, the extent to which weak signals are detected, recorded, and analysed, how the best practices/recommendations are implemented, and the overall quality of the information flow. The results of this study suggest improvements in the mindful organising construct from an organisational point of view. This paves the way for the definition of requirements to advance a model able to provide clearer guidance to any organisation wishing to sustain mindful organising.

Mindful organising is a key integrating concept in resolving the organisational accident. Mindful organising is both the unique source of critical information about the normal operation, as well as the key recipient of intelligence about the operation, ensuring that operational actions are always informed by the most current, relevant information about potential risks no matter how remote. However, the mindful organising construct has never been operationalised as a practical and effective approach for complex ultra-safe systems. Within the Future Sky Safety programme the construct has been reworked to reinforce the idea that mindful organising is more than just a state of mind. It is about the gathering and flow of information to ensure awareness and appropriate action, both at the operational level and amongst middle management in ensuring improvements are effectively implemented. A novel model has been advanced which provides an organisational context for its implementation, based on the behavioural-economic principle that being well informed about an issue, having an effective and practical solution and being accountable, creates a compelling obligation to act in an appropriate manner. It is suggested how the operationalisation of this model could be supported through a set of generic prototype software applications. The potential applicability of this approach covers not only all sectors of aviation, but also all industries that carry a significant operational risk, including other transport modes, health and social care, emergency services and financial services.