DFG funding for collaborative research project on error reporting
The Innovation, Strategy and Organization Group (ISO), headed by Professor Salge, and the Chair of Organization, headed by Professor Harbring, are pleased to announce that their joint research project "The Microfoundations of Error Reporting: A Mixed Methods Approach" will be be funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) over the next three years. The competitive research grant covers project costs of approximately 260.000 EU
Errors made by employees can cause severe harm not only to organizational performance, but also to the public good – most notably to employee well-being and customer safety. Their consequences, however, are most far-reaching in so called high-reliability contexts such as aviation, mining, and healthcare. Given the considerable importance of error reporting for organizational learning and the long tradition of research on errors and error management, it is striking to note how limited extant theory and evidence on error reporting still are. Although fundamental research gaps were identified a decade ago, many continue to exist today. The funded research project will combine field studies and experiments – both in the laboratory as well as in Virtual Reality – to uncover salient factors associated with the individual propensity to report an error observed in the workplace. It moves the organizational reporting culture center stage and builds a comprehensive conceptual framework on the determinants of individual error reporting.