Safety, Reliability, and “That Magic Second”: A Grounded Practical Investigation of Dilemmatic Talk in Pit Crews’ Post-Competition Debriefs

Safety, often understood as freedom from unacceptable loss, and reliability, the capacity to accomplish particular outcomes repeatedly through operational sensitivity, are compelling performance objectives for high-risk organizations. If either is absent, people, organizations, and their external environments are potentially at unnecessary risk. Focused on continuous performance improvement, debriefs are team meetings that are often implemented to enable safe, reliable outcomes in these settings through post-incident discussion. Historically, research has presumed debriefs to support the capacity of teams to pursue the twin objectives of safety and reliability simultaneously without contradiction. However, this theoretical assumption has never been assessed according to how a team’s discourse in debriefs constitutes safety and reliability as distinct outcomes. This research adopts Craig and Tracy’s (2021) grounded practical theory methodology to analyze talk in post-competition debriefs among stock car racing pit crews. Analysis framed debrief participants’ talk according to problem and technical levels of grounded practical reconstruction, suggesting a central dilemma that constrains pit crews’ efforts for safety and reliability in these meetings, namely a contradiction among performance expectations for regulatory adherence and for boundary pushing. Results also feature several discursive techniques that pit crews employ during debriefs in response to this dilemma. A model of dilemmatic talk in debriefs situates these outcomes in the context of fragility, an implicit value of this complex, dynamic work environment made explicit.