Communication and behavior in high reliability organizations: An Analysis of Communication in Civil Aviation

Communication can be seen as one of the most important features to manage conflicts and the stress of the work teams that operate in environments with strong pressure, complex operations and continuous risk, which are aspects that characterize a high reliability organization. This article aims to highlight the importance of communication in high-reliability organizations, having as object of study the accidents and incidents in civil aviation area. It refers to a qualitative research, outlined by documental analysis based on investigations conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Center of Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents. The results point out that human errors account for 60 to 80 percent of accidents and incidents. Most of these occurrences are attributed to miscommunication between the professionals involved with the air and ground operation, such as pilots, crewmembers and maintenance staff, and flight controllers. Inappropriate tone of voice usage, difficulties to understand different accents between the issuer and the receiver or even difficulty to perceive red flags between the lines of verbal and non-verbal communication, are elements that contribute to the fata of understanding between people involved in the operation. As a research limitation this present research pointed out a lack of a special category of "interpersonal communications failures" in the official agency reports. So, the researchers must take the conceptual definition of "social ability", communication implied, to classify behaviors and communication matters accordingly. Other research finding indicates that communication is superficially approached in the contents of air operations courses what could mitigate the lack of communications skills as a social ability. Part of the research findings refers to the contents of communication skills development into the program to train professional involved in air flight and ground operations. So, it is expected that this present article gives an appropriate highlight towards the improvement of flight operations training programs. Developing communication skills among work teams in high reliability organizations can contribute to mitigate stress, accidents and incidents in Civil Aviation Field. The original contribution of this article is the proposal of the main contents that should be developed in a Communication Skills Training Program, specially addressed to Civil Aviation operations.

Managing innovation under constraints: a glimpse on the brazilian conditions for innovation

To generate innovation in Brazil becomes a high level priority in the last two decades. Innovation, according to the Presidential speech, is the right way to conduce the nation towards the development of technological competitive capabilities through the high technology-based products and services. Although the nation has come a long way, Brazil has to face the challenge of overcoming obstacles in infrastructure conditions for innovation. This paper aims to describe the main conditions to manage innovation in Brazil. This work offers a quantitative analysis of the main factors that impact innovation. This is a documental research based on data collected from high reliability international sources complemented by a research field applied to a sample of technology–based firms located in São José dos Campos, Brazil. The results indicated that entrepreneurs deal with difficulties to develop managerial competences in order to manage the business growth while developing new products and services. The lack of qualified human resources to manage business in technological environment is also a matter.