[SystemSafety] Safety Culture

[Littlewood, Bev]

Dear Matt

I found your comment below intriguing! Could you spell out what you meant in a bit more detail? What are the differences of the design approaches, and of the US/French ‘cultural differences’ - and how do these correlate?

I recall thinking many years ago - at the time of the controversies about the A320 fly-by-wire systems - that the Boeing approach seemed to be to place (more) trust in pilots, to the extent of allowing them, in extremis, to do things that might cause damage to the airplane (in order to save it from a dangerous situation). Whereas Airbus systems prevented such actions, instead placing trust in the automation (e.g. to prevent the airplane getting into a dangerous situation). Decisions taken in anger, in real time, versus decisions taken at design time. But I’m not sure how this reflects cultural difference between the countries. Did you mean something like American individualism versus European collectivism, perhaps? If so, I’m not sure how this reflects different tolerance of risk/uncertainty.

Cheers

Bev

On 11 Dec 2017, at 10:26, Matthew Squair <mattsquair at gmail.com<mailto:mattsquair at gmail.com>> wrote:


2. Cultural tolerance of risk/uncertainty. An organisation scoring low on Hofstede’s cultural index for uncertainty will be more risk averse and deal with that risk through the application of hard rules and barriers in design. I think it unsurprisingly that Boeing and Airbus have come up with different approaches to flight protection laws given that the US and France score differently on Hofstede’s index of uncertainty tolerance. The degree of risk aversion can also drive a culture of ‘I can’t tell you until I’ve finished the design’ and the associated use of problematic bottom up techniques such as FFMEA.

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Bev Littlewood
Professor of Software Engineering
Centre for Software Reliability
City, University of London
EC1V 0HB

Phone: +44 (0)20 7040 8420  Fax: +44 (0)20 7040 8585

Email: b.littlewood at csr.city.ac.uk<mailto:b.littlewood at csr.city.ac.uk>

http://www.csr.city.ac.uk/
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