Error reframing: studying the promotion of an error management culture

Abstract

In the organizational behaviour and organizational psychology literature, individual errors are considered either as sources of blame (error-prevention culture) or as sources of learning and something to be encouraged in order to promote innovation (error-management culture). While we can assume that a third perspective exists somewhere in between, error management is usually considered as the best solution. Yet scholars have tended to neglect the planned and directed transition from a pure error-prevention to an error-management culture. We thus examine to what extent and under what conditions an organization can culturally transform the representation of individual errors through its business leaders. To answer this question, we conducted a qualitative study on the case of a French insurance company. We portray a realistic image of the promotion of an error management culture, pointing out certain limitations and constraints, while nonetheless identifying some conditions for successful error reframing