Knowledge management and transfer for mine 

emergency response 

Charles Vaught*, Launa Mallett, 

Michael J. Brnich, Jr., Dana Reinke, 

and Kathleen M. Kowalski-Trakofler 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Pittsburgh Research Laboratory 626 Cochrans Mill Road 

Pittsburgh, PA 15236, USA 

E-mail: cvaught@cdc.gov 

E-mail: lmallett@cdc.gov 

E-mail: mbrnich@cdc.gov 

E-mail: dreinke@cdc.gov 

E-mail: kkowalski@cdc.gov 

*Corresponding author 

Henry P. Cole 

University of Kentucky 

1141 Red Mile Road, Suite 102 

Lexington, KY 40504, USA 

E-mail: hcole@uky.edu 

Abstract: This paper discusses the fact that US coal mining organisations are 

losing the knowledge they need in order to be able to respond to emergencies. 

The authors note that knowledge management provides a useful perspective 

from which to view the problem, but that the debate about what constitutes 

knowledge should be broadened to include a debate about what constitutes 

management. It is argued here that knowledge is actually shared knowing 

distributed across group members; that such knowledge can be managed by 

cultivating it; and that narrative is the medium through which this may be 

done. The paper then examines NIOSH research that has attempted to use such 

an alternative knowledge management approach to help potential mine 

emergency responders better deal with the predicaments they are likely to 

encounter on-site. 

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Vaught, C., Mallett, L., 

Brnich, Jr., M.J., Reinke, D., Kowalski-Trakofler, K.M. and Cole, H.P. (2006) 

‘Knowledge management and transfer for mine emergency response’, Int. J. 

Emergency Management, Vol. 3, Nos. 2/3, pp.178–191. 

Biographical notes: Charles Vaught is a Certified Mine Safety Professional, 

and has been certified as an Instructor by both the US Mine Safety and Health 

Administration and the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Kentucky. His memberships 

include the American Sociological Association, the International Society of 

Mine Safety Professionals and the US Mine Rescue Association. 

Launa Mallett is a Sociologist at the NIOSH Pittsburgh Research Laboratory. 

Her research has focused on the development and evaluation of safety training 

materials and on improving mine emergency preparedness and response. She 

holds a Masters degree in Anthropology and a PhD in Sociology from the 

University of Kentucky. 

Michael J. Brnich, Jr., is Health Communications Coordinator for the NIOSH 

Pittsburgh Research Laboratory. He holds a BS degree in Mining Engineering 

from the Pennsylvania State University. He worked in education and training 

research for more than 18 years, where his principal interests were teaching 

and measuring mine emergency skills such as self-rescue and escape and 

mine emergency management. He is a Certified Mine Safety Professional and 

is a member of The International Society of Mine Safety Professionals, The 

Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, and the National Mine 

Rescue Association. 

Dana Reinke is a Sociologist and works to apply education and training 

intervention models to hearing loss prevention research. She is currently 

researching and developing communication products that provide greater 

access to health and safety information pertinent to the water well and surface 

drilling industries. She is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University 

of Pittsburgh. 

Kathleen M. Kowalski-Trakofler is a Research Psychologist, Certified Mine 

Trainer, and Psychotherapist. She received her BS and MS degrees from the 

University of Wisconsin-Madison and her PhD from the University of 

Pittsburgh. She has served on The International Emergency Management 

Society (TIEMS) Board of Directors. 

Henry P. Cole is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health, 

College of Public Health and Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at 

the University of Kentucky. He holds an EdD in Science Education and 

Educational Psychology from the University at Buffalo. He is an applied 

learning and cognition theorist with a specialty in teaching critical thinking 

skills through narrative psychology principles. He is a member of the American 

Psychological Association, American Public Health Association, the American 

Society of Agricultural Engineers, and the National Farm Safety Institute. 

1 Introduction 

An underground coal mine is one of those high-risk organisations, like a space shuttle 

installation or construction site, where one of the more common forms of organisational 

learning, trial-and-error, is not allowable (Aase and Nybo, 2002). That is because error 

carries such potentially disastrous consequences (a shuttle disaster or mine explosion, for 

instance). Thus, while errors occur, they cannot be introduced intentionally so that new 

personnel can experience what happens when something goes wrong under certain 

conditions. Rather, in high-risk organisations, neophytes will be indoctrinated with 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

protocols, post-hoc analyses of past incidents, and, if they are fortunate, informal 

interactions with individuals who have knowledge gained in other circumstances that can 

be transferred and applied to the current situation. It is these informal contacts that have 

the most value, according to Aase and Nybo (2002), because they take the individual 

beyond rote learning of fact-based information and on to the realm of lessons learned 

from active inquiry into an organisation’s stock of knowledge. 

It is ironic that in the Information Age, when organisations are literally awash in facts 

and figures, they are facing a critical loss of knowledge. That is because those who have 

expert insight into ‘how things really work’ in an organisation are on their way out 

– either through turnover, downsizing, or retirement. This problem is particularly acute in 

the US coal mining industry and in many ways makes it an exemplar for what is going 

on, to a lesser degree, in other enterprises. 

Beginning in the early 1980s, the US coal mining industry underwent a 

transformation that had a tremendous impact on the labour force: Vigorous competition 

drove prices down; less competitive properties were closed; productive capacity was 

concentrated among fewer, large companies; the average mine size was increased; and 

improved technologies were introduced. All these forces resulted in much higher 

productivity – mining more coal with fewer people. Of the 221 000 coal workers the US 

Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated there were in 1977 (US Department of Labor, 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1978), only about 75 000 remain. These labour cutbacks have 

produced a cohort of workers who came into the industry 20 or more years ago, managed 

to stay, and, for the most part, have not been augmented or replaced by younger 

employees. This means that the typical employment pattern seen in general industry, 

people leaving and at least some new people coming in, has not happened to any great 

extent in coal mining. 

Nowhere has this outflow of employees and expertise had a greater impact than in 

mining organisations’ ability to respond to emergencies. By US law,1

 every operator of 

an underground mine must ensure a capability for emergency mine rescue and recovery. 

The mine operator may do this by establishing two mine rescue teams (each with five 

members and one alternate) that will be available when miners are underground, or the 

operator may enter into an arrangement for mine rescue services. While mining states are 

still able to muster enough teams to comply with the law, there are now no resources to 

spare. Mine closings, and the associated reduction in the number of miners, have reduced 

the number of trained mine rescue members. The same process has also reduced the pool 

of potential emergency managers. 

In July of 1992, a committee of Federal and Pennsylvania state personnel was formed 

to consider the status of mine rescue in Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Department of 

Environmental Protection, Bureau of Deep Mine Safety, 1992). The committee made the 

following assessment: “Mine rescue coverage in Pennsylvania meets the requirements 

spelled out in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 30, Part 49. It does so with almost 

no reserve capacity, and a great reliance on federally supplied, State grants funding”. The 

Pennsylvania committee members also noted this about the mine rescue infrastructure in 

their state: No one knows for sure what equipment is available or where it is located. 

There are unanswered questions about both liability and payment for mine rescue 

activities performed during emergencies in mines other than those owned by team 

members’ employers. Pennsylvania state teams are losing team members and other 

privately maintained teams are in jeopardy. The workforce and the rescue teams are aging 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(average age in 1992 was in the early 40s). As a result of these factors, there is the 

concern that there may not be enough adequately trained and equipped teams, or people 

capable of directing their activities, to meet the needs of an emergency. 

On 27–28 January 1995, some 280 people attended a Mine Emergency Preparedness 

Conference held at the National Mine Safety and Health Academy in Beckley, West 

Virginia (US Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, 1995). The 

participants, who came from across the USA and several other countries, included 

personal protective equipment manufacturers, mining industry officials and labour 

representatives, state and federal mining personnel, educators, and mine rescue team 

members. These individuals were convened in multiple working groups to offer 

recommendations for improving mine emergency response. Their recommendations, 

contained in a report released by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration, 

addressed seven issues related to mine rescue: the composition of mine rescue teams; 

how to finance the mine rescue function; regulatory requirements; rescue equipment; 

communications and counselling responsibilities; maximising the effectiveness of mine 

rescue contests; and liability considerations. 

In essence, the Mine Emergency Preparedness Conference echoed many of the 

concerns raised by the Pennsylvania committee a few years before: In the face of a 

shrinking and aging mine rescue and response force, there is a need for the conservation 

and wiser use of all remaining resources. And, given the generally recognised 

employment pattern in coal, there is a need to prepare for a wholesale change-out of 

personnel in the near future. It was recommended that the industry embark upon a 

strategy of teaching mineworkers how to better react to non-routine situations, the use of 

more realistic emergency simulations to train rescue teams, and an increased focus upon 

preparing people to manage rescue operations. This paper examines a programme of 

research that was begun in the early 1990s to address some of the problems involved in 

enhancing expertise within a specialised community of practitioners while at the same 

time preparing for a new generation of incumbents. 

2 A ‘knowledge management’ approach 

The admonition that “there is no new thing under the sun ” (The Holy Bible, 1999) may 

very well apply to Knowledge Management (KM). Wilson (2002), for instance, has 

dismissed KM as largely information management in a different guise, promulgated by 

consulting companies in order to have something to sell at the end of the last decade. 

Alternatively, Hlupic et al. (2002) might also be used to support the argument that KM is 

just old wine in a new bottle, but from a rather different perspective. In discussing the 18 

assorted definitions of knowledge management they had discovered, the authors 

concluded that the wide range of formulations results from the fact that KM has attracted 

an array of scholars representing many different disciplines. And, like the blind men and 

the elephant (Saxe, 2004), each has brought his or her particular academic bent to the 

arena. Thus it is that for all its faddish aspects and co-optation by consultants (Ponzi and 

Koenig, 2002), and despite the fact that as a subdiscipline it might be no more than the 

sum of all its parts, the notion is hanging around and engendering increasing debate. The 

reason is fairly simple: KM focuses upon a very real problem and frames the issues in a 

way that is intuitively appealing. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem is made explicit when organisations are in danger of not being able to 

function well enough to meet their reasons for being. The solution, or part of it, anyway, 

is to be more systematic about finding, understanding, and using knowledge (Knowledge 

Management/Transfer Workgroup, 2002). The issue, given that definitions of ‘data’ 

(discrete facts) and ‘information’ (contextualised data) are generally agreed upon 

(Bouthillier and Shearer, 2002), is whether anything systematic can be done with 

‘knowledge’. In other words, can knowledge be managed? It is interesting that scholarly 

debate centres overwhelmingly on what constitutes knowledge – very few KM 

researchers have explored what it means to ‘manage’. Yet, one conditions the other, and 

in a very real sense arguing the nature of knowledge without first resolving what 

management entails is putting the cart before the horse. 

Morgan (1997) suggested that modern management has developed a sort of tunnel 

vision in which “the mechanical way of thinking has become so ingrained in our 

everyday conceptions of organisation” that it is difficult to see alternatives. So, given this 

mindset, it is assumed that in order to manage any part of an organisation (including a 

stock of knowledge), one must rationalise and control the thing to be managed. It appears 

from the literature that a great deal of mental energy has gone into reconciling knowledge 

with this prevailing management paradigm. But the concept does not fit. Scholars keep 

bumping into Polanyi’s (1966) contention that knowledge is a process of knowing and, 

‘We know more than we can tell’. Since what we cannot tell is not amenable to 

mechanical forms of manipulation such as codification, managing it, in the traditional 

sense, is problematic. 

In attempting to better define knowledge and move the debate forward, Hildreth and 

Kimble (2002) also implicitly redefined what it means to manage. For these authors, 

knowledge is a duality composed of ‘hard’ dimensions that can be articulated, and ‘soft’ 

dimensions that cannot. Further, with the balance between the two shifts from situation to 

situation – it is possible to tell more (or less) of what one knows about some things (at 

some times) than others. Therefore, by inference, the management of knowledge needs to 

be a dual activity. Hildreth and Kimble (2002) seem to slip from a mechanical to an 

organic (Morgan, 1997) way of thinking in discussing the soft aspects of knowledge as 

something that, rather than being controlled like hard knowledge, is ‘nurtured’. 

Interestingly, there is a management concept from the natural world that evokes both 

control and nurture. It is the concept of husbandry. Webster’s Third New International 

Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 1993) refers to husbandry as the cultivation, conservation 

and judicious use of resources, which, of course, KM theorists agree knowledge is. And, 

though this less mechanistic take on management does not actually cast knowledge in a 

new light, it does suggest how soft knowledge might be managed – by cultivating it. 

At this point, it is instructive to return to the main debate in order to couch knowledge 

as something that may, indeed, be managed. The starting point is a statement from 

Polanyi (1969) himself: “We can account for this capacity of ours to know more than we 

can tell if we believe in the presence of an external reality with which we can establish 

contact”. In other words, there is something outside the individual mind that is more than 

just ‘information’ or contextualised data subject to individualised interpretation. Popper 

(1978), one of Polanyi’s contemporaries, called this reality ‘world 3’. Beyond the 

physical (world 1), beyond the psychological (world 2), there is a shared reality 

“of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and stories and religious 

myths...”. Moreover, there is a particularly important feedback effect between 

worlds 2 and 3: “Our minds are the creators of world 3; but world 3 in its turn not only 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

informs our minds, but largely creates them... Our relationship to our work is a feedback 

relationship: our work grows through us, and we grow through our work”. Cole (2002) 

elaborated this thought in arguing that knowledge resides not just in the habits and mental 

models inside individuals’ heads, but “is the product of an ongoing interaction with the 

work at hand, the tools used to perform this work, and negotiations among members 

of the work group” and is “distributed across the individuals...”. If one accepts this 

socio-cultural standpoint, knowledge is, indeed, ‘out there’ and something that can be 

managed as a resource. 

If there is knowledge external to individual consciousness and distributed across the 

members of groups, it is there because it gets transferred; and it is in the transfer process 

that it can be, and is, managed. Socio-cultural learning theory provides insight into how 

this may be done. Socio-culturalists, while not rejecting the validity of behavioural and 

constructivist learning theories, the province of world 2, hold that education is a way to 

empower people to better comprehend their situation and make optimum use of the 

knowledge and material resources available to them. The vehicle for this process of 

empowerment is narrative, or storytelling. It is through the tales and stories residing in 

world 3 that people receive the constituents of meaning, which helps them in their 

continual decision making and problem solving activities. 

Put simply, narrative occupies such a ubiquitous role in how we come to know what 

we know, that its existence, like that of oxygen before Priestly, has until recently been 

largely unrecognised and uninvestigated. During the past few decades, however, an 

increasing number of scholars have been drawn to examine what part narrative plays, not 

only in the arts and literature, but in medicine and science as well (Rankin, 2002; 

Leinhard, 1997; Nash, 1989). Bruner (1986) noted that we have two modes of thought, 

which, while complementary, have distinctly different operating principles. On the one 

hand, there is paradigmatic thinking, whose processes we know quite a bit about: It is the 

thought mode of logic and science. The goal of paradigmatic thinking is universal truth. 

On the other hand, there is narrative thinking, about which Bruner thinks we know little: 

It is the thought mode of everyday life. The goal of narrative thinking is to connect events 

so that they make sense. Therefore, in everyday life, even in the everyday life of a 

philosopher or a scientist, narrative “is the fundamental scheme for linking individual 

human actions and events into interrelated aspects of an understandable composite” 

(Polkinghorne, 1988). In other words, narrative is where we get meaning. Polkinghorne 

(1988) went on to say that the “realm of meaning ... is not locked within a personal 

existence: it transcends us as individuals...”. 

Cole (1997) showed how research in reading comprehension and artificial 

intelligence supports the notion of narrative as the way we derive meaning. He reported 

that researchers attempting to write computer programs that can summarise written text 

found that approximately 15% of the information in any particular passage is explicit. 

The rest is implicit or tacit, and understandable only when the computer has been 

programmed with narrative scripts that constitute a stock of knowledge upon which it can 

draw to make sense of what is going on in specific settings. In sum, then, both humans 

and computers seem to need to be rooted in narrative for the sake of coherence. 

To this point, it has been argued that US mining organisations are losing knowledge; 

that knowledge is shared knowing distributed across group members; that such 

knowledge can be managed by cultivating it; and that narrative is the medium through 

which this may be done. The remainder of our manuscript examines the research, 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mentioned above, which has attempted to use such a knowledge management approach to 

help potential mine emergency responders better deal with the predicaments they are 

likely to encounter on-site. 

3 Cultivating stories of past emergencies 

The study and use of narrative, or storytelling, is occurring at a critical time. As social 

scientists have begun pointing out, many of the details that go into planning and 

executing key organisational processes are now conveyed electronically rather than being 

written down. Thus, the only place where there may be a lasting record is in someone’s 

head. Bock (1998) held that we can target what is important from an organisational 

perspective by asking what an organisation loses when a worker leaves, or what we have 

to teach a new person coming in. In the case of mine emergency response, the present 

researchers sat down with a total of 30 mine rescue veterans and asked them to tell stories 

to capture what was happening at specific moments in particular incidents with which 

they had been involved. These individuals invariably gave their accounts with an eye to 

the future: “... a lot of people have come and gone since 1969, and we are having fewer 

problems. So, in the next 10 to 15 years, there is just going to be a handful of people who 

have had any experience”. 

The narrators were guided through four major topic areas by the interviewers, who 

audiotaped their comments. Each topic area consisted of several questions designed to 

elicit general thoughts about the following: 

1 When and how the veteran became involved in emergency response work. 

2 The types of decisions that are made during emergency responses. 

3 Details about specific aspects of emergency responses, such as how long the 

individual stayed on-site. 

4 What the veteran would tell future responders to help them be better prepared. 

Every session lasted from 60 to 90 minutes, and was concluded only when the narrator 

had nothing new to add. The audiotapes were transcribed, and stored as computer text 

files. The analysed accounts yielded a myriad of useful insights. Four brief cases are 

offered here for purposes of illustration: 

Case 1 Why I volunteered for mine emergency work 

I feel like I have excelled in mine safety, and I hope I have left some type of mark. The 

superintendent who hired me told me that the more I knew the better opportunity I had to 

keep in work, because in the coal industry you had ups and downs, and lay-offs and so 

forth, and from the first day, I made an effort to get involved in as much as I could. I was 

immediately asked to go on a first aid team and in those days, if you were on it, you had 

to do it on your own time. And I put my own time in, and I was on a competition first aid 

team, and then later on, I think it was two to three years later, I got on the mine rescue 

team, and I got pretty deeply involved in mine rescue after that. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Case 2 Sometimes the correct decision is to take no action 

What had happened, there was a methane outburst at the neighbouring colliery. The 

assignment we were given was to go into the tailgate, or return airway, and travel that 

return airway, taking samples and looking for any survivors. The first samples we took 

gave us 56% methane and the rest was associated gases. So we knew we were in a real 

inert atmosphere that would not support life. And here, in the distance up the roadway, 

we could see this light moving. There were two individuals, one was a gentleman in his 

early 60s, I would imagine, and the other was a young man 16 or 17 years of age. Now, 

what this elderly miner had done, when he heard the bump and he heard people up the 

long-wall screaming, he took clear plastic and threw it over the top of both him and his 

coworker, and took his knife and cut the compressed air hose that was going to the 

cutting machine. So, now, they were more or less sitting in this little bubble and surviving 

off the compressed air that was down in the area. Management’s decision not to turn off 

the compressed air was made unaware to me at the time. The mine manager made the 

decision that the compressed air that runs down that long-wall, we have to maintain, 

because somebody may be using it to survive on. They knew that the compressors 

were not dumping enough loading. So, they knew this compressed air was leaking or 

going someplace. 

Case 3 Know when it is time to rest 

Well, I watched J.W. go into 72 hours at one time, and that is too long. He would tell you 

that that is too long, too. It is almost emergency dependent. If it were someone trapped, if 

it were a mine fire, if it were something else. We, from burnout, from doing things like 

that, have tried to establish that you will not stay longer than 12 hours. And if I had to 

recommend it, I would recommend it to 12-hour shifts. If you do eight-hour shifts you 

got three sets of individuals that have to be briefed, and so 12-hour shifts leaves two 

groups of individuals running something. I think 12 hours, if it were going to be many, 

many days can really get old, too. But 12 hours we have handled, and very well, on 

several occasions now. 

Case 4 Train future responders with simulations based on actual mine 

emergencies 

First, it was just hypothetical situations. And they did not seem to prove too much, 

because they were too hypothetical, “Maybe this, maybe that”. So, then we just decided 

to take incidents – actual incidents that occurred and re-live them. And it really brings 

things out, you know. “Are you prepared for this? Are you prepared for that?” When you 

speak of an actual situation in front of these guys, and they start to solve problems, then 

you can see – you see the panic starting to climb. You have got these men missing, and 

whatever you are doing is going wrong. You want to do this to ventilation, and the 

answer is “No, that won’t work, because the ventilation door is burnt up. You can’t shut 

that door”. “Oh, what are we going to do now? I can’t shut the door”. So, it really proved 

it was working. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, the cases are abstracted from literally dozens of pages of transcribed 

material provided by each respondent. That raises an interesting issue from a knowledge 

management perspective: Just as those being interviewed were engaged in deriving 

meaning, so too were the researchers who had to get meaning from this “stew of culture 

tales” (Cole, 2000). 

Weick (1995) described how researchers go about getting meaning in the 

following way: 

“The answer is, something that preserves plausibility and coherence, something 

that is reasonable and memorable, something that embodies past experience 

and expectations, something that resonates with other people, something that 

can be constructed retrospectively but also can be used prospectively, 

something that captures both feeling and thought.” 

In other words, Weick considered the effort to involve plausibility, coherence, and 

reasonableness, even if the story must be filtered to make it acceptable and credible. The 

goal of the present research is to present soft knowledge that would lead to insight, but 

not to relate everything each person said about a particular topic. In this sense, the soft 

knowledge is filtered and will be less comprehensive “but, if the filtering is effective, 

more understandable” (Starbuck and Milliken, 1988). One product of this research is a 

NIOSH Information Circular entitled, “An Oral History Analysis of Mine Emergency 

Response” (Vaught et al., 2004), which purports to use stories in text to transfer some of 

the collective wisdom of the 30 veteran responders to a new generation of mineworkers. 

4 Using narrative to inform a computer simulation 

A point stressed repeatedly by the veteran responders is that mine rescue personnel and 

those who must manage emergencies should be given ample opportunity to practice 

decision making in realistic scenarios. There are two ways this has traditionally been 

done in the industry: The US Mine Safety and Health Administration offers Mine 

Emergency Response Development (MERD) training, which allows participants to play 

various response roles in a classroom setting; and a few companies conduct mock 

disasters at their mine sites. Both of these approaches are fairly labour-time-and-cost 

intensive. Also, it is problematic (especially in mock disasters) to provide appropriate and 

timely feedback to each person involved in one or another aspect of decision making. For 

these reasons, it was decided to develop a web-based mine emergency simulation that 

could be used in a mine office or other on-site location with computer and internet access. 

The result was what might be thought of as an electronic MERD with enhanced feedback 

capabilities, dubbed the Mine Emergency Interactive Training Simulation (MERITS) 

(Brnich et al., 2004). 

MERITS is rooted in narrative. The basic scenario is developed from the collected 

stories discussed above. The setting is a small underground coal mine in the Appalachian 

mountains of the eastern USA. As the simulation opens, the protagonist (trainee or 

trainees) is kept busy performing the mundane tasks of a mine superintendent: reviewing 

production and status reports, signing the latest payroll sheets, and approving vacation 

requests, among other activities. This has the function of familiarising everyone with the 

interface and the many tools and sources of information that can be accessed when 

needed. Sometime around mid-morning, a fire occurs in an area of the mine. The first 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

indication that something is wrong comes when a motorman calls to report that he smells 

smoke near the mouth of 2 West Mains. From that point on, what happens or does not 

happen depends largely on the actions of the protagonist, although certain fact based 

events will always occur, providing a general timing and order to the story. 

The story develops over time, with a continual unfolding of points at which the 

person(s) playing the superintendent’s role must either initiate decision alternatives or do 

nothing. The decisions will, of necessity, be like those that individuals or groups have 

used (or failed to use) in actual emergency situations. Some will be good alternatives, and 

some, although possible, may not be effective (or may even be harmful). While 

individuals are working the simulation problem, they also receive feedback about what 

impact the chosen alternative has had upon the situation. Thus, the exercise teaches by 

reinforcing good decisions, concepts, and strategy, while providing a basis for 

remediating incorrect thinking. Shared knowledge grows from this process, because as 

the story unfolds, those who are working the simulation add their own stories of correct 

actions taken and opportunities missed. This fits the socio-cultural theory of learning, 

which is depicted in Figure 1 (Cole, 2000). 

Figure 1 How narrative guides what people do.

culture tales 

stories 

heard 

attitudes 

beliefs 

knowledge 

goals 

plans 

judgments 

decisions 

conduct 

actions 

behaviour 

effects 

outcomes 

consequences 

stories 

lived 

culture tales 

stories 

told 

Culture Cognition Conduct Consequences 

To the extent that the MERITS simulation is perceived as being authentic and relevant to 

workers’ circumstances, the simulated outcomes for various decision alternatives 

presented in the scenario can serve as powerful models to help workers learn in the safety 

of a training situation. An overview of one field test session, itself a story, will illustrate 

this point: 

“The session started with an introduction to MERITS and the simulated mine. 

The instructors presented the trainees with logistical and technical information 

regarding the layout of the mine, production methods, and emergency 

management procedures. Trainees were given time to review the information, 

look at the mine maps, and ask the instructors for clarification on issues related 

to the mine. The introduction lasted for 45 minutes and was followed by a brief 

overview of the software interface and its tools and the capacities of the 

computer to perform actions and commands during the simulation. After this, 

the trainees were given a short break. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The simulation was started about one hour and 15 minutes after the training day 

began. Trainees started in their mine superintendent role by reading status 

reports about the mine and its daily activities. They reviewed shift reports and 

familiarised themselves with the mine’s personnel. An exercise built into the 

early stages of the simulation provided an opportunity to complete a typical 

personnel task with MERITS. 

As the simulation progressed, trainees were introduced to a problem at the 

simulated mine and immediately became engaged in finding a resolution. 

Trainees increased their physical activity – standing up, moving around, and 

reviewing maps on the walls. Discussion increased, with disagreements ensuing 

over the course of action needed to resolve the problem. The balance between 

mine rescue and overall emergency management was a focal point of debate. 

Each group decision carried the weight of the trainees’ real mine emergency 

experience and their roles in those events. Decisions needed to be made quickly 

and, as consensus was reached, the computer operator would perform requests 

and build commands to effect the trainees’ decisions. As the simulation 

progressed, the trainees’ concerns shifted more toward large-scale emergency 

management issues rather than underground response tasks. Trainees referred 

to the mine’s emergency response plan to coordinate actions and delegated 

duties to various mine personnel using commands built by the computer 

operator. Prompt action by trainees early in the problem enabled them to see 

successful results of their decisions. The trainees worked on the simulation 

problem for over two hours. 

After the simulation ended, the debriefing session began. The computer, which 

had recorded all events and trainee actions that occurred during the simulation, 

had created a time-stamped trainer’s log. This log served as the foundation of 

the instructors’ debriefing session. The instructors discussed response times to 

events with the trainees, who were able to see how their actions impacted the 

resolution of the simulation problem. Instructors guided a discussion of key 

decisions that led to a successful resolution of the problem, while also pointing 

out things that could have been done differently.” 

This session was held on 5 July 2000, and was conducted by an experienced mine 

emergency and mine rescue instructor. The participants were managers from small 

underground coal mines. All trainees reported that they enjoyed and learned from 

the simulation. 

5 Conclusion 

This paper has argued that a knowledge management approach can be used to prepare 

future mine emergency responders. The knowledge management approach suggested here 

synthesises environmental, technical, organisational and personal perspectives. It also 

posits human judgment as a critical component of the decision-making process, 

recognising that while computers may be useful in structured situations, it is ingenuity 

that prevails in unstructured conditions (Gorry and Scott Morton, 1971). Bock (1998) 

characterised the management of knowledge in decision making as a process that 

comprises a loop: “Knowledge is created. This happens in the heads of people... 

Knowledge is shared. When knowledge is shared and used, the folks who use it modify it. 

This takes us back to knowledge creation”. Not only are people creators of knowledge, 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

they are collectively one of its main repositories. Bock further noted that to strengthen 

these repositories we should change our thinking from ‘training’ to ‘facilitating learning’, 

and put job aids and learning tools in the hands of people on the job. 

The more learning takes place, the more soft knowledge (involving the ‘right’ way to 

do a thing) is created in the organisation, or, more precisely, in the mine emergency 

response community. In recent years, organisations have directed a great deal of interest 

to soft knowledge and to discovering ways it can be shared and used in the decision 

process. In Courtney’s (2000) paradigm, the decision process consists not of leaping to 

some technically determined analysis, but of developing mental models by drawing upon 

the store of tacit knowledge residing in the organisation. Mitroff and Linstone (1993) 

suggested how a multiple-perspective approach might best be used in organisational 

decision making: 

• Achieve a balance among technical, organisational, and individual perspectives. 

• Use good judgment in drawing out the plausible elements in each perspective. 

• Recognise that information is gotten differently from the technical perspective than 

from the organisational perspective – the latter two (organisational and individual 

perspectives) require good listening. 

• Understand that the perspectives have mutual interdependencies and impact. 

• Avoid thinking statically, because the environment is dynamic. 

The key to managing soft knowledge is an ability to stop thinking of organisations 

as machines and start viewing them organically, as having shared learning 

(Addleson, n.d.). 

It was mentioned above that KM is predicated on the notion that knowledge is one of 

the most critical resources for an organisation or community of practice. Many 

knowledge management issues, it is true, centre upon such material aspects of control as 

computers and databases. Other issues, however, deal with the human factor. For those 

who analyse organisations from a KM perspective, it is the way in which an 

organisation’s players, both human and computer, process the knowledge resources 

obtained from shared learning that is most essential to the making of decisions 

(Holsapple and Joshi, 2001). And, it is the making of decisions that lead to problem 

solutions, which, in turn, spell survival for the organisation. 

Acknowledgements 

James Peay was instrumental in the conduct of the narrative research. MERITS benefited 

greatly from assistance provided by personnel at the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine 

Safety (BDMS). The authors especially appreciate the assistance of BDMS mine rescue 

instructors, Donald Eppley and Jeffrey Stanchek, who provided technical input and 

without whom in-depth field-testing of MERITS would not have been possible. Many 

thanks also to the following members of the MERITS project team: Gregory Cole, 

Audrey Glowacki (Co-Principal Investigator), August Kwitowski, Lynn Rethi, and 

Richard Unger. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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