This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This book investigates why, despite more and more resources devoted to safety training, expectations are not entirely met, particularly in the industrial sectors that have already achieved a high safety level. It not only reflects the most precious viewpoints of experts from different disciplines, different countries, with experiences in various industrial fields at the cutting edge of theories and practices in terms of safety, professionalization and their relationships. It also consolidates the positioning of the Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture, highlighting what is currently considered at stake in terms of safety training, taking into account the system of constraints the different stakeholders are submitted to. It reports some success stories as well as elements which could explain the observed plateau in terms of outcome. It identifies some levers for evolution for at-risk industry and outlines a possibleresearch agenda to go further with experimental solutions.
The objective of this book is to help at-risk organizations to decipher the "safety cloud", and to position themselves in terms of operational decisions and improvement strategies in safety, considering the path already travelled, their context, objectives and constraints. What link can be established between safety culture and safety models in order to increase safety within companies carrying out dangerous activities? First, while the term "safety culture" is widely shared among the academic and industrial world, it leads to various interpretations and therefore different positioning when it comes to assess, improve or change it. Many safety theories, concepts, and models coexist today, being more or less appealing and/or directly useful to the industry. How, and based on which criteria, to choose from the available options? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which benefits from the expertise of its worldwide famous authors in several industrial sectors.
This open access book addresses several questions regarding the implementation of human and organisational factors (HOF) so that recent improvements in industrial safety can be built upon. It addresses sources of frustration in senior management with high expectations of operational recommendations and disquiet on the part of HOF specialists struggling to have an impact on high-level decision making. The brief explores these issues with an emphasis on examples and lessons learned based on the experience of its authors, who come from different academic disciplines and various industrial sectors such as oil and gas, energy and transportation. It then offers some ways forward for a better consideration of HOF in hazardous companies with a view of promoting safety and facing challenges in a rapidly changing world.
This open access book provides an analytical and critical outlook, by leading scholars, of the impact of various trends in the quality of collaboration and resulting safety outcomes that arise from the evolution of traditional integrated production within a single firm into a complex web of partnerships and supply chains. In the face of increasing fragmentation within industrial production and the associated rise in the complexity of inter-organizational communication and transaction, this book analyses causal factors such as cost pressures, globalization of demand, increasingly flexible resource allocation and work organization, changes in legal liability and the possibilities afforded by information technology.
Various case studies focus on the effects of crossing boundaries between organizations, between different trades and professions and between countries, assessing the effect of variations in regulatory structures and national cultures. Furthermore, they illustrate the wide range of organizational forms to be found in high-hazard industries today and the impact, potential or real, of the variety of forms of partnership on safety and well-being at work. The contributors assess the effect of out-sourcing and of various forms of partnership and governance on safety at work and how they can be made to support the prevention of major accident hazards.
This open access book addresses relationships that develop from the complex set of legislative, regulatory, and institutional arrangements that arise in the governance of high-hazard industries, especially those connected with safety. It analyses the difference in practices between high-hazard sectors such as nuclear power, chemical processing, and transport with those in the finance and healthcare sectors. The relationship between regulating and regulated entities is important in ensuring that safety is not subordinated to other concerns and in maintaining public confidence. As a result, the brief addresses various pressures and trade-offs inherent in that relationship, trade-offs between such considerations as: cost of the oversight activity and its effectiveness; regulator independence and its level of competency and understanding of the risks involved; ability to provide advice on meeting regulatory goals and being able to criticize decisions made; and effectiveness and intrusion in operational activities. The contributors show how, over time, a more horizontal or "decentred" approach to regulatory oversight has appeared, with a larger degree of delegation of certain decisions to industry and a greater role for a range of third parties such as certification bodies, auditors, insurers, industry associations and NGOs. This book is of interest to academics working in the fields of safety science or organizational management and to practitioners, regulators and policy-makers concerned with health and safety and critical infrastructure.
This open access book addresses the idea that there are two ways to go about achieving a safe working environment. The text challenges the prevailing notion that compliance with a rule system, imposed from the top of an organization and designed to anticipate possible hazards in system operation, is really incompatible with the idea that the professional expertise of front-line workers is what promotes safe outcomes despite inevitable unanticipated perturbations. The contributors, drawn from academic and industrial backgrounds, demonstrate that rather than being at odds with each other, rules-compliance and proactivity are in fact complementary resources the coexistence of which increases safety. Furthermore, the implications of this approach extend beyond safety, being relevant to business performance, strategies for innovation and system resilience as well.
The book steps back from an exclusive focus on front-line work to explore the way in which compliance and initiative are articulated at different levels within the hierarchy of a firm, right up to that of top management. Further, the contributors analyze the way in which safety authorities, the justice system, and the general public perceive and interpret such strategies, in particular in the aftermath of major events.
This book deals with issues of interest to researchers and graduate students in safety science and organization studies and to members of expert bodies and experts in industry and consultancy concerned with similar subjects.
