Professor Karlene H. Roberts
Karlene H. Roberts, Ph.D. is
Professor in the Graduate School,
Haas Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group,
University of California Berkeley.
She is also Research Psychologist, Institute of Industrial Relations and
Director, Collaborative for Catastrophic Risk Management — both at
University of California Berkeley.
Karlene focuses on the design and management of organizations and
systems of
organizations
in which errors can have catastrophic consequences. The results of her
research have been applied to U.S. Navy aircraft carrier operations, the
U.S. Coast Guard, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication (SWIFT), The Federal Aviation’s Air Traffic Control
System, Gard Services, British Petroleum, NASA, and the medical
industry.
She authored
New Challenges to Understanding Organizations and
Developing an Interdisciplinary Science of Organizations
(Jossey-Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series),
coauthored
Organizational Behavior (Kent Series in Management),
and coedited
Handbook of Organizational Communication: An Interdisciplinary
Perspective.
Her papers include
Risk Mitigation in Virtual Organizations,
The Incident Command System: High-Reliability Organizing for Complex
and
Volatile Task Environments,
Must Accidents Happen? Lessons from High-Reliability
Organizations,
Reduction of Tanker Oil and Chemical Spills: Development of Accident
and
Near-Miss Databases,
Mitigating Hazards Through Continuing
Design: The Birth and Evolution of
a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit,
Investigation of the Performance of the New Orleans Flood Protection
System in Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005,
When systems fail, and
Learning How Organizations Mitigate Risk.
Karlene is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association,
the American
Psychological
Society, the Academy of Management, and the Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology.
She was awarded a Docteur Honoris Causa by the
Universite Paul Cezanne – Aix, Marseilles
III.
Karlene earned her BA in Psychology at Stanford University and her Ph.D.
in Psychology at University California Berkeley.
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