blame culture concept
Org-level pattern where failure is responded to by identifying and punishing whoever 'caused' it.
Org-level pattern where failure is responded to by identifying and punishing whoever 'caused' it. Suppresses information flow — people hide problems, work around safety procedures to avoid being seen as the source, and stop reporting near-misses. The result is that the organization loses its main signal about what's actually going wrong, and incidents repeat. Westrum classifies blame-cultures as pathological. Often unintentional: leaders who think they're 'holding people accountable' produce blame culture as a side effect, even when they don't intend to.