Safety in a Complex World as the Result of Co-creation and Co-learning by Key Agents Towards a Vision on Living Safety Organisations
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Many traditional safety approaches seem to have decreasing added value, due to the complexity and continuous change of the world we live in.At the same time, human factors come more to the forefront, as they seem of growing relevance.As part of a four-year research effort (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006) we developed an innovative perspective on the role of people in occupational safety (management).We focussed our analysis around two statements:(1) Occupational safety and unsafety are man-made and (2) occupational safety and unsafety are the (temporary) result of (continuous) co-creation and co-learning processes from the key actors involved.The findings presented support the hypothesis formulated, though the evidence is still limited.The implication is a more strategic view on "the human factor in safety": top managers, R&D specialists, safety engineers, line managers, operatives, etc. who jointly decide about the future of the company, the development of the production processes, about technological developments and reorganisations, and hereby often implicitly about safety.This co-creation process has many characteristics of a collective learning process.The value of safety seen as a social construction is discussed as a natural complement to safety based on objective risk levels.That leads to new insights into the nature of safe and unsafe situations respectively, and clarifies the relevance of two other categories, false safety and false unsafety.From an agent based perspective on safety, the latter two categories seem of great relevance (and need to be clarified further in future research).
Source: TNO Repository
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2163301401