Introduction: Deviance from approved procedures poses a risk to organisational performance and potentially to individual or collective safety. Understanding attitudes to deviant behaviour provides scope to define the difference between wilful violations and positive deviations. Such a definition, however, cannot mitigate the risk that a process deviation poses, nor its potential for unintended outcomes.
Whilst this study focuses on aviation maintenance processes, it is proffered that similar research could be applied to other highly regulated, high consequence industries where procedural deviance, process workarounds, and organisational norms are common, or indeed accepted, or where due attention is not applied to the capture, codification, and control of positive deviance behaviours.
Purpose: Initial data collection was undertaken as a PhD research project in 2017. A comparison and contrast activity was undertaken in 2025 following collection of further data. The aim of the follow-on study was to ascertain if attitudes identified in the initial study remained extant. In the period 2017-25 the aviation regulatory framework changed from technical compliance to system safety, the aircraft platform aged thereby requiring additional maintenance effort, the operational environment changed, and turnover of maintenance personnel remained high.
Method: Both studies utilised the Maintenance Innovation Survey (MIS). The MIS comprises 60 statements where responses are codified using an anchored 6-point Likert scale from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree.
Results: The comparative analysis is expected to confirm that positive deviance behaviours remain extant and uncontrolled (final analysis to be completed by July 2025).
Conclusion: No pathway should exist that allows deviant decision-making to prosper over logically conceived compliance requirements in highly regulated, high consequence industries. Defining the impact of individual behaviours and understanding attitudes towards compliance is essential to mitigating the risk of positive deviance by well-intentioned individuals. It is this presenters position that positive deviance requires a capture, codify, and control response.