The Cost of Silence: Normalization of Deviance and Groupthink

Wilcutt & Bell / NASA · Safety & Error, Voice & Silence · NASA Safety and Mission Assurance (briefing document) · 2014 · Open access

A NASA Safety and Mission Assurance briefing applying Diane Vaughan's normalisation of deviance concept alongside Janis's groupthink to a series of high-profile failures: Shuttle O-ring waivers, external tank foam strikes, the Costa Concordia grounding, and ISS EVA-23. Makes the connection between organisational silence and catastrophic outcome with institutional directness unusual in safety communications. Useful as a practitioner-facing synthesis of academic concepts applied to real incidents, and as evidence that the highest-stakes organisations take the cost of silence seriously as a systemic — not individual — problem.

Wilcutt, T. and Bell, H. (2014) The Cost of Silence: Normalization of Deviance and Groupthink. NASA Safety and Mission Assurance Senior Management ViTS Meeting, 3 November 2014.

Neighbours (11)

• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (paper)
• Human Error: Models and Management (paper)
• Local Rationality
• Normalisation of Deviance (Challenger)
• Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World (paper)
• Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascos (paper)
• The Dark Side of Trust (paper)
• Barriers to PS
• Normal Accidents
• Open Secrets & Half-Baked Ideas
• Types of Silence