James Reason
James Tootle Reason CBE (1 May 1938 – 5 February 2025) was a British professor of psychology at the University of Manchester, from where he graduated in 1962 and where he was a tenured professor from 1977 until 2001.
Reason was born on 1 May 1938.[1] He wrote books on human error,[2] including such aspects as absent-mindedness, aviation human factors, maintenance errors, and risk management for organizational accidents.[3] In 2003, he was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Aberdeen. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, the British Psychological Society, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the Royal College of General Practitioners. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2003 New Year Honours "for services to Reducing the Risk in Healthcare."[4] In 2011 he was elected an honorary fellow of the Safety and Reliability Society.[5]
Among his many contributions is the introduction of the Swiss cheese model, a conceptual framework for the description of accidents based on the notion that accidents will happen only if multiple barriers fail, thus creating a path from an initiating cause all the way to the ultimate, unwanted consequences, such as harm to people, assets, the environment, etc.[2] Reason also described the first fully developed theory of a just culture in his 1997 book, Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.[3]
Reason died on 5 February 2025, at the age of 86.[6]
References
[edit]- ^ Sumwait, Robert L. (1 May 2018). "The Age of Reason". NTSB Safety Compass. Archived from the original on 18 December 2020. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
- ^ a b Reason, James (1990). Human Error. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-30669-0.
- ^ a b Reason, James T. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents. Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84014-105-4.
- ^ "No. 56797". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2002. p. 8.
- ^ Reason, James (2013). A Life in Error: From Little Slips to Big Disasters. Farnham, England and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 9781472418432.
- ^ "The Absent-minded Professor Who Made a Safer World". Flight Safety Australia. 10 February 2025. Archived from the original on 10 February 2025. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
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