Dr. Siobhan Corrigan

Assistant Professor Siobhán Corrigan is Director of the Masters in Managing Risk and System Change and Assistant Director of the Centre for Innovative Human Systems (CIHS), School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin. Siobhán lectures in areas of Organisational Behaviour, Psychology of Work, Leadership, Human Factors & Research Methods and has published widely in her field. Her research focuses on understanding the functioning of socio-technical systems in order to support industry with the complexities of managing system change and improving overall risk and safety performance. Siobhán's current research interests include Collaborative Networks & Learning; Understanding Behaviour & Managing Risk in Transport Operations; Leadership & the Application of Human Factors in Healthcare Safety. She is PI on a number of industry/research collaborations and has played a leading role on high profile EU funded Human Factor research projects with continuous and successful engagement with a range of industries (e.g., Aviation, Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical, Health & Process). Siobhán is a certified Human Factor trainer and has substantial experience in the development, delivery & evaluation of core Human Factors training. She is also an active member of a number of working groups both at EU and national level tasked with setting the future research agendas.

  Managing Change in Complex Organisations   Organisation design, development, theory, behaviour   Organisational evolution/change   Organisational Learning   Organisational safety culture   ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE   ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS   PSYCHOLOGY   RISK FACTOR AWARENESS   RISK MANAGEMENT   SAFETY CULTURE

I have had continuous and successful engagement in industrial based research projects. The core focus of my research has been on advancing the socio-technical understanding of managing the completies of change management in order to support industry in improving overall risk and operational performance. My core funding has been a result of my participation in EU funded projects right from the BriteEuram programme in 1996 right up until EUFP7 in 2016. I am PI on an Erasmus+ project that is due to commence in October 2017 and PI on an EU EIT Raw Materials project that is due to commence in January 2018. I am PI on an EU COST Acion proposal that was submitted in September 2017 and PI on a proposal under the 2020 Transport programme. I have also been successful with national funding as I am currently a Co-Applicant in a HRB funded project and PI on two directly funded industry projects. Due to the industrial focus of many of the research projects that I have led, the research dissemination has been characterised by numerous reports to industry, various working groups on policy and practice as well as academic publications (xxx) The products and services we take for granted in our everyday lives are mostly the result of complex systems that are contingent on the interplay between technology, people, process, knowledge, organisational goals and regulatory demands. At the core are people, designing, operating, managing and improving the system to produce outputs and as consumers we are rarely conscious of these systems until they let us down (e.g., a flight is delayed, treatment delays in healthcare, train derails etc). The unique contribution of my research is to put the human at the centre of its analysis - systems and processes have to work for people and they can only do this if the role of humans is central. My research has focused on the development of concepts, tools and methodologies that can understand, diagnose and provide an implementation road map to change these systems and processes. These developments are continually tested in collaborative based research and practice across a range of industries (e.g., aviation, rail, maritime) that provides an academically rigorous but practical focus on risk and change management. The underlying themes that underpin my action based research programme include the following: (i) rich modelling of normal operational practice, the unique contribution of this modelling is that it moves beyond just a linear task based approach to one that captures the more tacit/informal knowledge and social interactions that are not always visible within our organisations; (ii) socio-technical analysis of the 'blockers' and 'facilitators', highlighting the vulnerabilities and risks in the system; (iii) assessing and managing the risk in the overall change process itself; (iv) understanding the behaviour of individuals at all levels within an organisation, particular focus on leadership; and (v) framework for learning and collaboration to support implementation and evaluation. Building on this extensive research experience, network of industrial/research collaborators and core conceptual and methodological framework my research plan is to apply the learning and further test the applicability of my approach within two specific sectors: Leadership & Implementing Change in Healthcare and the Application of Human Factors in Connected & Autonomous vehicles. As a result of my involvement in various working groups, I have succeeded in getting these issues on the research agenda. My future research agenda will continue to pose the following question: how can complex systems which carry critical risks become more resilient and successfully implement the necessary change? My future research programme will be directly linked with the Masters programme where the research outputs will be transferred into the Masters programme to bridge gaps in competence of our industries to manage risk and change.