Evaluating the cultural aspects of complex systems

As technologies improve, system components are becoming more reliable and are delivering higher performance levels. However, most complex systems incorporate humans, and human performance issues are becoming relatively more important. In particular, individuals' and groups' cultures are increasingly recognized as major performance-affecting factors. In civilian aircraft systems, companies such as Boeing are finding that culture is now the key differentiating factor in aviation safety. A similar situation appears to exist across ostensibly similar military air forces. Accident rates vary greatly across cultures, even when comparing near-identical modern aircraft fleets. This paper examines the background to cultural issues; it presents a brief description of culture and cultural factors and, as an illustrative example, describes the effects of cultural variation on performance in aviation. It examines cultural bias in systems engineering standards, and comments on the lack of culture-sensitive systems engineering tools. The paper also describes a culture-based modeling tool that has been developed by the authors to evaluate the cultural match of individuals and groups to particular environments and, potentially, to complex systems. It concludes that human error and culture are closely linked and that culture must be formally considered in the systems engineering of complex systems.