## 2 Background and Motivation
Although the adoption of RE principles and approaches is widely acknowledged in the manufacturing domain [30; 31; 32; 33; 34], the application of the RAG in such a sector remains relatively limited. In [35], the RAG was used to assess and enhance the resilience of a change management process in an aircraft components production company, demonstrating its effectiveness in identifying both strengths and weaknesses within the process. In [28], it was applied to collaborative robot (cobot) applications, proving to be a valuable and replicable tool for identifying areas of strength and improvement in managing OSH management in cobot-integrated workplaces, while also revealing significant gaps in contextual risk assessment practices. Furthermore, although [36] presented a methodological approach to integrate the RAG with the Rasch model to establish a standardized and objective method for measuring and comparing organizational resilience across multiple entities, the study also highlighted the suitability of the proposed method for manufacturing organizations, as they typically involve complex relationships among agents, intensive human-machine interactions, and high safety requirements. What these studies have in common is that they demonstrate the RAG's value in improving OSH management and in fostering greater safety awareness among company employees. This evidence justified and supported the adoption of the RAG in the present study. Moreover, this flexibility is well suited to combining this model with storytelling, which in itself takes an exploratory and tailored view of the problem [13]. The combination of storytelling and resilience engineering, particularly within the context of safety research, represents a relatively novel approach. While storytelling within the RAG framework in manufacturing safety has not been widely explored, its broader application across safety-related domains is well documented. In sectors such as construction and electrical work, storytelling has been effectively used to enhance safety training, commonly through toolbox talks, video narratives, and immersive digital tools like 360-degree panoramas, which have been shown to improve hazard recognition and risk perception [37; 38; 39; 40]. Additionally, in software design, storytelling is a well-established method to communicate user needs and align multidisciplinary teams around shared goals [41]. Despite these established applications, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior study has applied storytelling as a foundation for the RAG framework, either in manufacturing or other sectors. This study seeks to address that gap by using narrative scenarios to capture lived employee experiences and offer a fresh lens for examining complex issues of safety and organizational resilience. Indeed, storytelling is a powerful means of connecting with people on an emotional level, capable of communicating complex messages engagingly and reflectively [42]. It has been shown to promote user-centered and divergent thinking [41], unlocking imagination for both the storyteller and the audience, and helping to spark new ideas and perspectives. As such, it is particularly suited to investigating adaptive capacities and emergent practices in organizational settings. Among the different narrative methods of telling stories to engage the audience, this work adopted a case study approach [43], i.e., it used real-life examples to illustrate a point, an approach already used in academic settings [37]. Unlike the anecdote or the personal story, which are both based on personal experiences, the case study uses stories from real life to show exemplary events. Summarizing what has been discussed, this study leveraged the principles of Safety II to incorporate them into a RAG-based questionnaire. This questionnaire was administered to a sample of Italian companies after they had been confronted with two stories designed to make them think through a storytelling approach.