Silence That May Kill: When Aircrew Members Don't Speak up and Why


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Date

2012-01

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

Altmetric
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Abstract

Several accidents have shown that crew members’ failure to speak up can have devastating consequences. Despite decades of crew resource management (CRM) training, this problem persists and still poses a risk to flight safety. To resolve this issue, we need to better understand why crew members choose silence over speaking up. We explored past speaking up behavior and the reasons for silence in 1,751 crew members, who reported to have remained silent in half of all speaking up episodes they had experienced. Silence was highest for first officers and pursers, followed by flight attendants, and lowest for captains. Reasons for silence mainly concerned fears of damaging relationships, of punishment, or operational pressures. We discuss significant group differences in the frequencies and reasons for silence and suggest customized interventions to specifically and effectively foster speaking up.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

2 (1)

Pages / Article No.

1 - 10

Publisher

Hogrefe

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

aircrews; assertiveness; CRM; flight safety; speaking up

Organisational unit

03356 - Grote, Gudela (emeritus) / Grote, Gudela (emeritus) check_circle

Notes

Funding

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