The recent COVID pandemic revived the interest in resilience as the ability to anticipate unexpected events for higher level safety and reliability. To increase resilience, organizations must articulate two forms of safety: regulated (technological and procedural barriers) and managed (capacity to proactively and mindfully face unexpected events), which should reinforce one another. However, experience shows that it is difficult to develop one without jeopardizing the other. We use the theory of organizational limits to explore how organizations expand organizational limits to develop mindfulness and resilience. Through a qualitative case study of a European nuclear power operator, we highlight the negative interactions between endogenous limits of the cognition and those of the managerial control. Our results show the unexpected cascading effects on safety performance and point to a paradox whereby instead of helping to extend endogenous organizational limits, implemented safety practices constrained them
