Excerpt
The lack of bad outcomes can reinforce the ‘rightness’ of trusting past practices instead of objectively assessing the risk, resulting in a cultural drift in which circumstances classified as ‘not okay’ slowly come to be reclassified as ‘okay’. Diane Vaughan coined the term ‘normalisation of deviance’ and defines it as ‘the gradual process through which unacceptable practice or standards become acceptable. As the deviant behaviour is repeated without catastrophic results, it becomes the social norm for the organisation.’