Post-Doctorante / Post-Docotrant en Safety management et auditabilité

The post-doc contract is funded by the ENAC-Airbus Safety Management research chair, within the ENAC (French Civil Aviation University) research Lab. The Safety Management research chair is a multidisciplinary one combining topics involving diverse disciplines.

The three main topics are :

-        The use of data to support safety management: this strand explores to what extent and under what conditions, AI can be used to derive safety insights (and foresight) from textual data coming from safety reports

-        The representativeness of spontaneous safety reports : this strand explores, through a combination of statistics and qualitative analysis, to what extent spontaneous safety reports are representative of the whole range of operations throughout the world

-        The safety impact of auditability of safety management approaches : this strands investigates to what extent making a safety approach auditable (as required by safety authorities) can affect its efficiency in terms of safety. The main perspective adopted here is that of management science.

The job relates to the latter topic.

Objectives of the project

The post-doctoral researcher will investigate the third topic primarily in the framework of civil aviation.

Civil aviation is a highly regulated domain as far as safety is concerned. The regulatory regime mainly relies on the issuance by Authorities of regulatory requirements and the surveillance, mainly by means of audits, that these requirements are met. Similar processes exist internally within aviation organizations. The objective of the project is to investigate to what extent making safety approaches auditable (as assumed by the regulatory regime) can affect the efficiency of such approaches on safety itself. Several cases will be used as bases for this work: a/ Safety management approaches that were ‘recently’ regulated by Authorities, and thus had to be made auditable by regulated organizations (e.g. Safety Management Systems); b/ Safety management approaches that Authorities envisage to make mandatory (e.g. Safety Culture). To explore these cases and more generally the topic of the project, the candidate will have a privileged access to several representatives of both auditors and auditees of safety management approaches in several aviation organizations worldwide.

Main activities

-        Literature review (both white and grey literature)

-        Collection of qualitative data, including interviews of key stakeholders of safety management approaches (e.g. auditors from civil aviation authorities, internal auditors, audited from several aviation organizations – aircraft manufacturers, air traffic management…)

-        Qualitative data analysis

-        Dissemination: scientific papers writing, presentation at international conferences

• -        PhD in management science or social science

  -        Strong interest in research

  -        Strong interest in aviation

  -        Advanced spoken and written English

  -        Strong skills in qualitative methods

  -        Strong interpersonal skills (to easily interact with people from different backgrounds and with different profiles)