Another of the HF community’s self-referential strategy involved the distribution of HF knowledge in the drilling industry. The HF community created several reports for the drilling community that incorporated HF knowledge. For instance, the Human Factors subcommittee of industry association OGP developed a report that focused on the cognitive aspects of HFs, which focused on explaining core psychological concepts.
However, the analysis of HF reports that were published in the wake of Macondo showed that they were focused heavily on the psychology of HFs, but were rather decontextualized from drilling practices. In an article in a trade journal, the decontextualized nature of the various HFs initiatives was challenged:
“The common thread throughout all of these publications and activities is that they are directed toward a narrow audience of human factors specialists who are concerned with researching human factors-related issues or setting up of training programs. However, there has been little attempt to communicate the central ideas to those who deal with the problems of human error in all its forms on a daily basis; in particular, the drilling operations community.” (Hsieh, 2014).
As these quotes shows, the HF community strived for discipline recognition by emphasizing HF as a separate initiative and producing artifacts, like reports, in which HF knowledge was illustrated. However, we argue that this approach to knowledge sharing was ineffective. It appears that the HF community operated largely from their frame of reference, using their specialist vocabulary and presenting HF knowledge in a decontextualized, abstract manner. Their reports included little reference to the specific drilling processes and context. Our analysis shows that this self-referential practice created pragmatic knowledge boundaries between the HF and drilling communities that complicated mutual engagement, knowledge sharing, and participation in the drilling community’s learning initiatives and daily risk management practices in oil companies. For instance, as several interviewees indicated, this specialist HF vocabulary creates legitimacy problems for the HF community. For instance, a consultant said: “[drillers] think [HF] is touchy-feely psychological babble” (Drilling consultant). This indicates that the use of the specialist HF vocabulary undermines the community’s credibility with the drilling community. In particular, their use of the specialist HF vocabulary appears to conflict with the established workplace discourse, which is dominated by the drilling community’s technical terminology. Our analysis indicates that the drilling community used their own technical specialist vocabulary to exercise authority in the workplace. A UK offshore inspector referred to this:
“I do think that drilling speaks another language. And I know that some of my colleagues, they go to inspect a drilling rig and they don’t go anywhere near the drill floor, because they don’t understand anything that happens there. That is a problem. There is so much jargon and so many acronyms […] fundamentally the physics and the engineering of it is quite
understandable but it is presented to you in this format that is just like a foreign language. So you do have to be able to breach that.” (Offshore inspector #1).
Another interviewee added: “[drillers] wear that jargon with such pride” (HF specialist in major oil company #1). Hence, we argue that the technical drilling vocabulary served as a mechanism for in- and exclusion, reinforcing the drilling community’s status, while excluding those who are not familiar with the technical terminology and practices. Succeeding in the offshore industry as a HF specialist therefore seems to require having technical knowledge of drilling processes, terminology and context. For instance, HF specialist in major oil company #1 argued: “to see the [HF] problem requires understanding
the [drilling] context. And that takes some degree of expertise within the area that you are working in”. Yet, it seems that HF specialists did not always succeed in developing this
knowledge:
“I’ve seen human factors people fail horribly when they get into industry. To have a good ergonomics or occupational psychology [degree] doesn’t equip you to go in to an oil rig and achieve very much. […] You need to understand the person and have the technical grounding.”
(HF consultant #1).
Hence, we argue that the HF community has the implicit assumption that having specialist HF knowledge is sufficient for making a positive contribution to safety in the drilling industry. They did not deepen their technical and cultural understanding of the drilling context and processes. Hence, we argue that the HF specialists’ use of non-technical, specialist knowledge and vocabulary, and their lack of knowledge about the drilling context undermined their legitimacy in the drilling industry. Their attempt to engage with the drilling community while holding on to their own frame of reference was doomed to fail, as their language and knowledge did not resonate with the drilling communities technical specialist knowledge and discourse. In fact, the drilling community used their technical drilling discourse to maintain authority relations in the workplace. As such, an inspector of the UK regulator referred to the issue of language:
“If you are a HF specialist and you need to talk to the driller or their manager, you need to have that credibility, you need to be able to speak in their terms, and there probably are very few HF specialists who are that good.” (Offshore inspector #1).
Similarly, HF specialist in a major company #2 argued for the importance of “being able
to establish guidelines that someone with a non-human factors background can pick up and understand and see how this is helpful.” These quotes show the importance of
contextualizing HF knowledge to the work setting in which it is supposed to be applied. This indicates that knowledge sharing with the drilling community requires the HF community to learn about the technical drilling practices and discourse and mold the two bodies of knowledge. Without such knowledge transformation, sharing HF knowledge is unlikely to occur.