Human Failure, Organizational Change & Culture

Master's Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Economic Geography, grade: 6 (Schweiz), University of Zurich (Geographisches Institut), language: English, abstract: This study supports, that culture influences the relationship between organizational change and human failure. An analysis of global large loss events shows, that more than half of all losses can be backtracked to a human failure. A closer look at the organizational background of these human failure losses indicates additionally, that two thirds of them occurred after or during organizational changes of the employer. Because human performance is also dependent on cultural factors, this thesis investigates whether the established relationship between organizational changes and human failure features a cultural pattern of occurrence as well. In order to render an acceptable degree of comparison, the loss events are aligned on Hofstede's cultural dimensions, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity and long-term orientation. This study concludes, that a society's uncertainty avoidance and its individualism are related to the occurrence of large human failure loss events. While a society's high uncertainty avoidance is negatively correlated, a society's high individualism is positively correlated with human failures. It is further proposed, that a large power distance often prevents a workforce from committing human failures when their organization is changing. Trust in the vertical hierarchy gives them security. On the other side, high individualism aggravates human failures during organizational changes. The employees know that they are on their own, and that they have nobody to rely upon in insecure times.