High Responsibility Teams - Teamwork Context-Specific Transfer of Crew Resource Management Training from Aviation to other Teams within High Reliability Organisations

The goal of this study is to emphasise the importance of studying High Responsibility Teams (HRT) in organisational research and to present a teamwork context analysis inventory that reveals the requirements for HRTs. HRTs work, among other areas, within anaesthesia, police forces, fire services or aircraft maintenance. Although research on teamwork and team training is widespread within the field of work and organisational psychology, HRTs have
rarely been included in this research stream so far. To train HRTs for their demanding and challenging tasks, Crew Resource Management (CRM) training, which has its roots in civil aviation, is used to acquire efficient and effective teamwork competencies. This CRM training
has to match the work environments and requirements of each of the HRTs to be effective. It is argued that a "one fits all" approach does not work efficiently. Therefore, teamwork contexts have to be analysed soundly in order to foster a target group-specific transfer of the training approach. We present an inventory that analyses teamwork contexts and reveals different requirements for HRTs. Based on the results of the inventory, tailored training programmes can be designed for HRTs. A study conducted with 551 subjects from six different HRT work contexts shows that significant differences, but also relevant similarities, exist between work contexts of the investigated HRTs, which should be considered accordingly in CRM-based interventions. With intraclass correlations of all item groups and single items between .08 and .83 for ICC(1) and between .67 and .99 for ICC(2) (7-point Likert scale), the instrument shows itself to be reliable, and "job profiles" are created from which the cognitive, affective and behavioural training needs can be deduced and translated into a training design. Subsequently, it will be discussed how CRM-based interventions can be applied to different HRTs, and a recommendation for a tailored intervention for the fire
services is given.