Tom Reader

Tom is a professor in Organizational and Social Psychology at the London School of Economics.  Tom’s research focuses on organisational and safety culture: he studies how norms and behaviours relating to risk-management, team-working, and ethical conduct emerge in organizations and contribute to outcomes.

Tom’s current work investigates how organizations can better detect and respond to signals of impeding and serious failure. Specifically, he explores how various stakeholders who may not operate in standard management lines of control can have unique insights on problems at the operational-level of work (e.g., errors, accidents, conduct) that senior managers may miss. Tom examines the psychological and organizational mechanisms (e.g., culture, data analytics) through which such insights can be given prominence, and thereby learnt from and used to support organizational resilience.