Incident management systems have the potential to improve security dramatically but often experience problems stemming from
organizational, interpersonal and social constraints that limit their effectiveness. These limits may cause underreporting
of incidents, leading to erroneous perceptions of the actual safety and security situation of the organization. The true security
situation may be better understood and underreporting may be reduced if underlying systemic issues surrounding security incident
management are taken into account. A dynamic simulation, based on the parallel experience of industrial incident management
systems, illustrates the cumulative effects of rewards, learning, and retributions on the fate of a hypothetical knowledge
management system designed to collect information about events and incidents. Simulation studies are part of an ongoing research
project to develop sustainable knowledge and knowledge transfer tools that support the development of a security culture.
Keywords Knowledge management - Security - Simulation - System dynamics - Incident management - Organizations
When the majority of this work was undertaken, the lead author was at Agder University College (Now Agder University) in Norway.
The lead author has subsequently moved to Tecnun, University of Navarra in Spain.