An instrument to assess high reliability in organizations: psychometric properties, practical utility and theoretical relevance

High-reliability organizations (HROs) exhibit close to error-free performance while operating in environments where failure can be catastrophic. Yet while HROs have been the focus of research for decades, as things stand, no broadly applicable and validated instrument has been developed to assess whether employees’ experience their organization to be functioning as an HRO (i.e., in line with the hallmarks of HROs set out by Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001 ). To address this gap, we (a) worked with subject-matter experts to develop an instrument to assess people’s HRO experience (HRO X ) and test its construct validity (Study 1), (b) validated the instrument in a convenience sample of full-time workers (N = 290; Study 2) and (c) re-validated the instrument with a targeted sample of employees working in HRO-typical industries (N = 293, Study 3). Results from Studies 2 and 3 provided evidence of the reliability and construct validity of the HRO X and also confirmed its convergent and discriminant validity. Supporting the instrument’s predictive validity, in both studies the HRO X predicted safety-related outcomes, workplace health and wellbeing-related outcomes, and relevant attitudinal outcomes. Finally, speaking to the instrument’s theoretical validity, both studies supported hypotheses derived from the Social Identity Model of HROs ( Haslam et al., 2022 ). In particular, HRO X was predicted both by social identification and by identity leadership — although the focus of this differed across studies. In this way, the HRO X scale appears to provide a solid platform for the assessment and refinement of principles that underpin high reliability in organizational contexts.