The ETTO Principle: Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off: Why Things That Go Right Sometimes Go Wrong

Accident investigation and risk assessment have for decades focused on the human factor, particularly 'human error'. This bias towards performance failures leads to a neglect of normal performance. It assumes that failures and successes have different origins so there is little to be gained from studying them together. Erik Hollnagel believes this assumption is false and that safety cannot be attained only by eliminating risks and failures. The alternative is to understand why things go right and to amplify that. The ETTO Principle looks at the common trait of people at work to adjust what they do to match the conditions. It proposes that this efficiency-thoroughness trade-off (ETTO) is normal. While in some cases the adjustments may lead to adverse outcomes, these are due to the same processes that produce successes.

Author: Erik Hollnagel
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 05/28/2009
Pages: 162
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780754676782

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2009 pg. 124

About the Author
Erik Hollnagel (PhD, Psychology) is Professor and Industrial Safety Chair at MINES ParisTech (France), Professor Emeritus at University of Linköping (Sweden), and Visiting Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim (Norway). Since 1971 he has worked at universities, research centres and industries in several countries and with problems from several domains, including nuclear power generation, aerospace and aviation, air traffic management, software engineering, healthcare, and land-based traffic. His professional interests include industrial safety, resilience engineering, accident investigation, cognitive systems engineering and cognitive ergonomics. Erik Hollnagel has published more than 250 papers and authored or edited 13 books, some of the most recent titles being Resilience Engineering Perspectives: Remaining Sensitive to the Possibility of Failure (Ashgate, 2008), Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts (Ashgate, 2006), Joint Cognitive Systems: Foundations of Cognitive Systems Engineering (Taylor & Francis, 2005) and Barriers and Accident Prevention (Ashgate, 2004). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Ashgate Studies in Resilience Engineering series and, together with Pietro C. Cacciabue, Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Cognition, Technology & Work.