Collective management in dynamic situations: the individual contribution

This paper presents an empirical study for extending the ecological safety model developed for individual activity (Amalberti in La conduite des systèmes à risques, PUF, 1996; Hoc and Amalberti in J Cogn Eng Decis Mak 1:22–55, 2007) to collective management. The study took place in a medical emergency center (SAMU) and focused on individual contribution to safety of collective management. The experiment aimed at extending the domain of validity of the conclusions of a previous study (Marc and Amalberti in Trav Hum 65:217–242, 2002) showing that individual intervention (as an actor and as an observer) in collective action was a matter of ecological safety. A “pseudo-simulation” was designed for confronting experienced PARMs and physicians of the SAMU with a series of “safety events” in the functioning of “their” emergency center. In the position of observers, participants were asked to comment on what they observed during a series of short periods of simulated activity and to assess situation mastery by the various actors observed. The results confirm that the model of ecological safety is directly relevant for collective management of “technical errors”: as observers, participants reacted to safety events depending on their potential consequences; not all “erroneous” actions oriented toward task performing were detected, and if detected they were not always identified; participants focused mainly on errors they observed which might have operational consequences on the global quality of safety management in the center. Concerning “non-technical errors” in collective work, participants were focusing on safety management by the physician as the responsible for the center safe functioning; they were less prone to identify safety events related to teamwork itself. These last results can be interpreted at the light of an extension of the ecological model of safety management for taking into account the teamwork-oriented dimension in collective work.