Problems context, quality of organizational attention, and organizational learning from rare events: Taking accidents\linebreak in the industry of civil aviation as examples

ZHAO Chen, GAO Zhonghua, CHEN Guoquan

Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1) : 191-204.

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Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1) : 191-204. DOI: 10.12011/1000-6788(2017)01-0191-14

Problems context, quality of organizational attention, and organizational learning from rare events: Taking accidents\linebreak in the industry of civil aviation as examples

  • ZHAO Chen1, GAO Zhonghua2, CHEN Guoquan3
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Abstract

Organizational learning from rare events has been a new branch in the field of organizational learning in recent years. However, organizations have paid most of their attention to the single rare event at present and neglected the internal associations of present event with relevant events happened previously. In fact, the superposition of relevant rare events can strengthen the problems contexts so that organizations can enhance the effectiveness of organizational learning from rare events through improving the quality of organization attention. Therefore, this study tested the relationships between the quality of organization attention in the specific problems context and the effectiveness of organizational learning from rare events based on the data about the accidents of American airline companies in a period of 20 years from the perspectives of stability and vividness. Specifically, the influence of attention stability on the effectiveness of organizational learning can be indicated by the results that the higher the frequency of relevant rare events and the greater the intervals between previous relevant rare events and present rare event, the higher the effectiveness of organizational learning would be. The influence of attention vividness on the effectiveness of organizational learning can be reflected by the U-shaped relationship between the vividness of the reasons behind all rare events occurring within industries and the effectiveness of organizational learning and the inversed U-shaped relationship between the vividness of the reasons behind all rare events occurring within organizations and the effectiveness of organizational learning.

Key words

organizational learning / learning from rare events / problems context / the quality of attention / stability / vividness

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ZHAO Chen , GAO Zhonghua , CHEN Guoquan. Problems context, quality of organizational attention, and organizational learning from rare events: Taking accidents\linebreak in the industry of civil aviation as examples. Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice, 2017, 37(1): 191-204 https://doi.org/10.12011/1000-6788(2017)01-0191-14

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (71302119,71302170,71572119);Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71421061)
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