Strategic perspective of error management, the role of leadership, and an error management culture: a mediation model.
| Autor | Oliveira, Margarida Freitas |
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Introduction
Errors are an inevitable part of all human activity and are prevalent in complex environments such as organizations, being impossible to eliminate them (Ramanujam and Goodman, 2003; Zhao and Olivera, 2006). Organizations have invested a lot in error prevention, implementing increasingly simpler systems and processes, easy to operate and maintain and ideally error-proof. However, these investments brought a reduction in errors in operations, but they also showed their limitations and the impossibility of eliminating all the errors that occur that can lead to negative results and too disturbing outcomes (Parry etal, 2015).
The most common is that organizations depend only on error prevention as a way to avoid them, focussing on the idea that errors must be eliminated before they occur, trying to eradicate its presence through mechanisms (e.g. system engineering, human factors, security systems, among others), aimed at reducing the occurrence. However, the exclusive emphasis on error prevention has its limits, especially in the long term, in that it simply reduces the possibility of learning from them, and minimizes the possibility that some errors can result in long-term positive consequences (van Dyck et al, 2005).
Error prevention is likely to lead to a culture of blame and punishment for the presence of errors, creating a strong tension caused by errors and, consequently generating harmful work behaviours of covering up errors, becoming a norm or rule. People, when working in error punishing cultures, develop a tendency to ignore and cover-up mistakes because the threats they face if they disclose them do not outweigh the benefits (Zhao and Olivera, 2006; Dimitrova et al, 2017). Therefore, a pure and simple error prevention approach cannot adequately deal with the fact that errors are unavoidable. A second "line of defence" is needed by organizations--error management--an active approach to errors designed to control and reduce the negative consequences of errors, preventing recurrence (Guchait et al, 2018) and increasing positive effects such as learning, creativity and innovation (Frese and Keith, 2015; Wang etal, 2018; Dahlin etal, 2018) and decreased turnover (Jung and Yoon, 2017). It is here that this study gains a strong justification, highlighting the importance of an error management approach in organizations, contributing to the knowledge and understanding of facilitating variables. Organizations that only emphasize the prevention of errors, do not accept errors and this has been a stance taken by a large number of companies, which shows failures and poor management (Love and Smith, 2016). Since errors are unpredictable, error prevention must be complemented by error management strategies (van Dyck et al, 2005; Deng et al., 2022; Matthews et al., 2022). The purpose of this article is to understand the role of leadership and an organizational culture of error management in the effective use of an error management strategy in organizations, whose literature theoretically recognizes its importance, with the need for more empirical studies remaining (Gelfand et al, 2011; van Dyck et al, 2005; Cannon and Edmondson, 2005). Therefore, it is intended to answer the following research question: what is the role of leadership and an organizational culture of error management in an error management strategy in organizations? There are no known studies dealing with the influence of both variables in an approach to error management in an organizational environment, encompassing various sectors of activity, namely in Portugal. This study contributes to filling this gap in a topic so relevant to leaders and managers.
To that end, this article, after this introduction, presents a literature review on the strategic perspective of error management, the role of leadership and an organizational culture of error management as facilitating variables for error management. Then, the methodology is presented. In the results section, a statistical analysis is carried out, and in the discussion section the analysis is complemented by discussing the results taking into account the explained literature review, and the implications and suggestions for future investigations are presented. Finally, the conclusions are presented.
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The strategic perspective of error management
Managing errors effectively is crucial to the success of any business (Guchait et al, 2016; Deng et al, 2022). By the way, the relationship between error management and organizational performance is well evidenced in the literature (van Dyck et al, 2005; Gelfand et al, 2011; Swanson and Hsu, 2011; Oliveira et al, 2020).
Error management accepts errors as an intrinsic part of organizational life and is concerned with dissociating errors from their consequences (van Dyck etal, 2005). Its focus is on the effective way to deal with errors after they occur, to minimize their negative consequences, such as scheduling delays, quality and production problems, and even low employee performance, among others (Homsma et al, 2009; Swanson and Hsu, 2011), maximizing positive consequences such as learning, creativity and innovation (Frese and Keith, 2015; Wang etal, 2018; Dahlin etal, 2018), that positively contributes to organizational success in today's competitive and global market (Hernandez and Galvis, 2021). Therefore, error management must be seen as a value creation process from the strategic point of view and organizational development that managers must adopt in conducting their companies; the faster they do it, the faster companies will produce better results (Oliveira et al, 2020).
In organizations committed to managing errors, the main objective is not to prevent isolated errors, whether human or technological, but to make the system as robust as possible, to manage the errors that will undoubtedly happen. For this, it is essential to provide the necessary resources that make the system resilient, such as the existence of an organizational culture where communication and learning about errors are encouraged (Cusin and Goujon-Belghit, 2019). An effective error management climate promotes open communication and error sharing (Cigularov et al, 2010; Koc, 2013) and encourages individuals to treat mistakes as normal, rather than something they can be blamed for (Gold etal, 2013). It also encourages employees to report their mistakes (Gronewold etal, 2013) and helps to quickly detect and handle errors (Frese and Keith, 2015).
Managing errors is, therefore, recognizing the inevitability of errors and adopting an organizational focus in their management, admitting greater tolerance to errors, enabling an understanding of their nature and the mechanisms behind them, improving detection of them and reducing the probability of them being repeated. It is a process comprising three main steps: error detection, explanation, handling and recovery. Error detection is essential for reducing negative results and error recovery. Once an error has been detected, it is important to explain why it occurred. Once an error is detected, it is important to recognize and explain what happened and why. Error explanation represents the second step of the error handling process (Kanse etal, 2005) and it is important for learning from mistakes and for facilitating the final step, treatment and recovery, which may involve modifying an existing plan or developing a new one, to compensate for the error. Error handling or recovery aims to make it easier and faster to recover the state of the system when an error has been made (Keith and Frese, 2008).
In short, error management is a process that is concerned with increasing the speed at which errors are signalled and detected, to ensure that learning occurs (van Dyck etal, 2005). Error management is possible through fast detection and damage control. Once an error is detected, it is necessary to act quickly and have the actions properly defined to manage it. As it is not possible to eradicate errors, a systemic focus on error management in organizations is important.
2.1 Error management facilitators
Error management is a difficult and complex process, particularly in today's dynamic organizational environment (Bauer and Mulder, 2013; Reason, 2000). Error management is influenced by several individual factors and the culture of organizations (Deng et al., 2022; Matthews et al., 2022). Thus, from the outset, an error management strategy will be facilitated, if it exists: (1) A general expectation that errors will occur; if individuals assume that errors do occur and this is accepted and natural thinking, then error management is facilitated because individuals are prepared to see errors when they do occur. If people do not recognize the possibility of errors occurring, then little effort will be made to identify whether an error has occurred (Hofmann and Frese, 2011). (2) A positive and constructive view of mistakes; if there is a positive and constructive view of errors, accepting that they can be valuable for learning and to stimulate greater attention and adaptability to new situations, and if this is an organization's belief and value, then error management is facilitated because individuals in organizations are better equipped to detect and handle errors. An organization that promotes awareness of the occurrence of errors produces a high level of communication about errors, makes its members willing to learn from errors individually, makes them aware of possible error situations and appropriate reactions to them. On the contrary, if people are guilty, punished or if there are other negative reactions to the errors, it is likely that the error communication will be reduced, as in these cases, the most likely response to an error is not to report it, but to try to find other culprits (Cigularov et al., 2010; Koc, 2013; Gold et al., 2013; Gronewold et al., 2013). As a result, the opportunities for detecting...
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