Books &
Book Chapters
How Could This Happen and Confronting Mistakes are comprehensive discussions on error management, blending the latest thinking with state-of-the-art industry practice on how organizations can learn from mistakes.
Edgar H. Schein on How Could This Happen:
“This is a very important book for the analysis of safety, quality, and employee engagement by focusing in detail on the many explanations for why individual and organizational errors occur, how they consistently create major accidents and organizational failures, and why organizations do not learn effectively from them. The multiple perspectives of the different authors provide a variety of explanations and apply these to many important cases.”
Kathleen M. Sutcliffe on How Could This Happen:
“Stories of error after the fact inevitably are simple and straightforward. But this conception belies what everyone knows to be true. Underneath simple, linear, obvious stories of error is a more complex reality, a sorrowful reality of actions going wrong. Errors have consequences for organizations, and they have consequences for the humans involved in them. Jan Hagen’s comprehensive volume of essays by a renowned set of scholars could not be timelier or more important for enhancing our understanding of errors and their management. This book is a blessing for scholars looking for new theoretical footholds in what some think has become a moribund domain of research inquiry. And, perhaps more importantly, it is an elemental book for leaders and others trying to manage complex organizational systems.”
Amy C. Edmondson on Confronting Mistakes:
“Confronting Mistakes is a remarkable book. Its gripping case studies of airline disasters will keep readers on the edge of their chairs, and its penetrating analysis is deep and sophisticated. Hagen’s writing is highly accessible and engaging and will enlighten everyone from error experts to curious readers in other industries. This book is destined to be a classic in the error field.”
Tony Kern on Confronting Mistakes:
“Human behavior is a complex ecosystem, but that is no excuse to wave a white flag of surrender. Hagen has done a masterful job of capturing the salient lessons from the high risk field of aviation and made them available to the world. A tip of the hat to a fellow warrior in the battle against human error and their often tragic consequences.”
