Safety vs. Succession Planning in Petroleum Engineering

Summary and Hermeneutics Framework

Belfast is a petroleum company with core competencies in oil and gas exploration, development, and production, located in Calgary. Its experts are petroleum engineers, many of whom have substantial years of experience in the petroleum sector. The company's decision makers are its Board of Directors. Belfast's decision makers and experts disagree about the experience level of engineers that the company needs to supervise sensitive oilfield operations. Whereas the Board believes that newer engineers should become exposed to a broader range of activities in the field, the experts disagree and hold the opinion that risking public safety by placing fresh engineers — just out of school — in supervisory roles is unprofessional. The conflicting opinions of the Board and the experts are manifestations of the epistemologies, or knowledge paradigms, of the two groups. An examination of the underlying assumptions of these two groups helps to characterize their respective epistemologies.

The paper discusses the worldviews of the Board and the field experts using hermeneutics and critical theory frameworks. The discussion includes the groups' philosophical assumptions and epistemological stances as they relate to the issues of on-boarding, transitioning, sustainability, and promoting new engineers to greater levels of responsibility.

The decision to use hermeneutics is to enter this evaluation without a preset list of criteria and rely purely on interpreting the actual facts of this case (Klein, 1996). In order to understand the situation among the Board, the senior experts, and the newest employees, an understanding of each party's views must first be established. In this way, an unbiased examination of the components of this discussion can be conducted without preconceived ideas or conclusions. Next, in the hermeneutic circle, an iterative approach is used to compare these parts in various combinations in order to develop the shared meanings, concepts, and beliefs among the parties (Klein, 1996). After comparing and documenting the various epistemologies, the parts are assembled together and shared. By communicating back to each of the parties what they are perceived as understanding, they can reflect on their responses and re-evaluate their views of one another. This is key to defining the next steps of the organization in resolving conflicts and meeting the core objective of creating sustainability — and ultimately meeting the profit maximization goal of the corporation.

The principles most apparent in this process include: recognizing the potential gaps between what is being done and the knowledge of participants (Klein, 1996); acknowledging the possibility of more than a single understanding for a similar sequence of events; and assessing traditional social constructs between leadership and the experts relative to communication (Klein, 1996) — that is, whether communication has always been top-down, or whether there are areas where horizontal learning can occur.

Analysis of Findings

Several findings emerge from this analysis and are reviewed here to further develop an understanding of the situation.

First, "doing appears less valuable than knowing" (Agbons, 1975, p. 15). There seems to be a knowing-doing problem. The existing challenge is to close this performance paradox gap between doing and knowing by translating knowledge into working knowledge for newer engineers. Transforming knowledge into action will be important to the company's success.

Second, expert petroleum engineering practitioner knowledge is not easily transferable to younger engineers, and there seem to be many lost opportunities to groom competent professionals. Workers in petroleum engineering have generally come from three backgrounds: those who earned a degree in the field from an accredited institution; those who transferred from other related fields; and those trained on the job by senior experts. Even today, fewer than 75% are qualified through education or formal training in petroleum engineering, according to J.C. Calhoun in the Journal of Petroleum Technology (1996).

Having noted the diversity of opinions within the frameworks of critical theory and hermeneutics, the perspectives of each type of worker are explored to understand their conceptual connections and realize the part they play in the larger process.

Third, taking into consideration the conflicting underlying philosophies and perspectives held by both groups is helpful to the organization, especially as it involves succession planning, on-boarding, transitioning, and promoting new engineers to greater levels of responsibility.

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