Different approaches to learning from errors: Comparing the effectiveness of high reliability and error management approaches

Errors may be a safety hazard, yet all organizations and managers have to deal with errors. Error management and high reliability are strategies for dealing with errors. While these strategies originate from different research approaches and have been well studied independently, they have not been directly compared in empirical studies. Based on a theoretical analysis of similarities and differences between these approaches, we developed a training based on each of them. For our High Reliability Approach (HRA) training, we deduced training principles based on the facets of safety organizing. For the Error Management Training (EMT) and the training in the error-avoidant control condition (EAT), we oriented on existing training studies. We trained university students (N = 359) in a relevant skill. Our study revealed that both EMT and HRA training led to better performance than EAT. Exploratory analyses revealed emotion control towards errors to be related to performance only in the EMT group. Our article suggests that in spite of similar effectiveness of EMT and HRA training, there may be differential processes in these two approaches.