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PA2: Organisational Culture and Trust The notion of a 'safety' culture is widely recognised and the enviable record of safe operation of organisations such as air traffic control is often considered to be reliant on the existence of such a culture. Similarly, reported experiences of 'high-reliability' organisations such as carrier flight deck operations and nuclear plant operation suggest that the prevailing 'culture' is a key factor in building mutual trust and hence the enhancement of overall system dependability. Although we have not found examples of this in the literature, anecdotal evidence suggests that a 'security culture' exists in some organisations to maintain the integrity of the organisation's information. The aims of this activity are to conduct a detailed investigation into the notion of organisational culture and trust and to develop guidance for system developers about how culture and trust issues may affect system dependability. The principal application area that we will focus on is healthcare and our goal is to improve our understanding of what mutual trust (or lack of trust) exists in scio-technical healthcare systems, how culture and trust is supported by IT systems and the extent to which the overall dependable delivery of healthcare is reliant on this trust. Work in this activity closely overlaps with PA3: Design for Dependability as both of these activities rely heavily on ethnographic field work in real settings to inform their work. So far, we have been involved in an extended field study with a local hospital trust where we have primarily focused on administrative systems. In addition, we have also been concerned with field studies concerned with the use of computer support for mammography and studies in safety consultants and control rooms. We have now started considering the nature of failures in socio-technical systems and relating our field work to system failures. In the next stage of the work, we will move on to develop specific guidance and (possibly) software tools to help designers assess the impact of culture and trust issues in their design processes.
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