Sidney Dekker

'Sidney Dekker (born 1969) is a Dutch psychologist and safety scientist whose work on human factors, just culture, and resilience engineering has fundamentally reshaped the understanding of human error in complex systems. His book The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error (2006) established the "new view" of human error: the position that human error is not a cause of accidents but a symptom of systemic failure.

Dekker's work draws on the systems-theoretic tradition of Jens Rasmussen and extends it into the domain of organizational safety culture. He argues that the "blame and train" response to accidents — punishing individuals and retraining them — is not merely ineffective but counterproductive, because it drives the information needed for learning underground. His concept of "just culture" provides a framework for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable behavior in the aftermath of failure.