Organizational strategies used by operations and maintenance personnel at two US nuclear power plants are compared with those described by the Berkeley group in their extensive high reliability organization studies. Using the method of strategic analysis, we show that the two organizations use quite different strategies in their search for reliability and effectiveness. The focus on the coordination of workers and structuring of tasks reveals areas not completely dealt with in previous HRO-related studies. It is argued that adopting a complementary approach in which elements of both metholds are selectively applied may lead to an analytic framework of greater theoretical and explanatory power.