Identifying a probe to visualize the variability of operating teams for supporting the human reliability analysis of nuclear power plants: An explanatory study

Operating teams consisting of several team members still play a critical role in coping with off-normal conditions in socio-technical systems. Thus, various kinds of human reliability analysis methods have been suggested based on the consideration of diverse performance shaping factors that can affect the performance of team members. Unfortunately, since multiple performance shaping factors can vary across operating teams (i.e., crew-to-crew variability), it is crucial to figure out how to visualize this variability in a systematic way. In this regard, comparing the cultural characteristics of operating teams with their performance would be a good starting point. This study investigates how cultural characteristics can be correlated with the occurrence of unsafe acts based on empirical data collected from operating teams working in the main control room of Korean domestic nuclear power plants. The cultural characteristics of the operating teams were visualized using five Hofstede's cultural indices and compared with the number of unsafe acts observed from simulated off-normal conditions. As a result, a statistically significant correlation is found between the occurrence of unsafe acts and one of the Hofstede's indices. From this finding, it is expected that a relevant probe to scrutinize crew-to-crew variability could be soundly determined in future works.