• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long Posts
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no HIERARCHY of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Safety Acronyms
    • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
    • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
    • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
    • Safety Slogans List
    • Road Safety Slogans
    • How to write your own safety slogans
    • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
    • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
    • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
    • Safety Slogans for Work
You are here: Home / Robert Long / And the Innovation is? More Controls…..

And the Innovation is? More Controls…..

November 7, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 4 Comments

One of the great anxieties about Safety is the lack of control. If there was a favourite word for the safety industry, this would be it – controls.

imageThis is what attracts Safety to the language of numerics and mechanistic worldviews. Even when it transfers to an interest to neuroscience, psychology and sociology it sustains the same worldview. Even when Safety proposes that it is doing something ‘different’ it still defines itself in metaphors of control. It does this by maintaining the myths of: complexity, performance measures, computing, solutions, engineering resilience, ‘narrative as data’ and behavioural economics and omitting language and metaphorical concepts of: wickedity, fallibility, ecologies, myth, mystery, paradox, transdisciplinarity, knowledge cultures and uncertainty. What we end up with is: more and new systems, language masked as change, culture as data and humans as components in systems.

Scientific theory is constructed by scientists, by fallible human beings who use the tools of the embodied human mind to articulate meaning. One of the primary tools used is that of the conceptual metaphor. The use of metaphor is not isolated but situated in context. Our context and culture not only generate the metaphors we use but our metaphors give meaning to the context we have constructed. We don’t have a choice about thinking and speaking metaphorically. It is so deeply embedded in all human experience that we cannot control the way we communicate metaphorically (Lakoff and Johnson, (1980) Metaphors We Live By). It is simply how humans live. So, metaphor becomes a wonderful litmus test for worldviews.

Language and experience are neither objective nor neutral. They are informed and influenced by our worldview. Our metaphors therefore present our worldview and validate our experience. Similarly, our metaphors validate and create our worldview. So it is not surprising that the STEM worldview seeks engineering and scientific metaphors to explain how they construct meaning (semiosis). However, it is rare to find a scientist who understands that the use of metaphor constructs meaning. The STEM worldview tends to hold to the idea that language and meaning are objective.

Research by Mitchell and Carew (Metaphors used by some engineering academics in Australia for understanding and explaining sustainability; Environmental Education Research, Vol 12, No.2, April 2006) demonstrates that metaphors serve as mental models for articulating meaning in science. The research shows that the common metaphors for environmental scientists are: sustainability as ‘weaving’, ‘guarding’ and, ‘trading’. Similarly in the safety industry the predominance of metaphor is anchored to ‘controls’, ‘engineering’ and ‘regulation’. These are what Ellul (The Technological Society) calls the discourse of ‘technique’.

We first learned about the subjectivities of science from Feyerbend (Against Method), Law (After Method), Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific revolutions) and others. We learned some time ago about the biases of positivism and empiricism in STEM thinking. Such thinking is fine but it isn’t holistic. There are other knowledge cultures that offer much better diversity for the problems safety faces. And this is not about ‘right and wrong’ views but rather considering what transdisciplinarity might offer the world of safety beyond its fortress paradigm.

The world is not just a world of objects that have independence from humans (subjects). There may be an objective reality but humans cannot know it objectively or absolutely. As humans we are subject to fallibility, essential for learning. Fallibility is all about the vulnerability of not being in control (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/) and this makes life risky and unsafe. Indeed, the terror of death hangs over fallible humans as not just an item of news but a reality of living (Becker (1973) The Denial of Death). The key to resilience is not control or engineering but learning to live with fallibility and a lack of control and remaining functionally in the world. Anxiety, depression and mental illness are very much about not functioning with resilience in the world. Such anxiety and depression is often evidence of a struggle with fallibility. The last thing I want to hear is that some bright spark can engineer it.

One might have a theory of how one can improve safety but the expression of that theory cannot be separated from the language used to express it. What the social study of linguistics demonstrates (Potter and Wetherell, 1987, Discourse and Social Psychology, Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour) is that semiosis (meaning in language) is constructed by a worldview, or a particular disciplinary worldview. One cannot speak of a methodology (philosophy/ideology) of change without observing the philosophy of language in that ideology. Ricoeur called this The Rule of Metaphor (1975). That is, meaning is always grounded in a conceptual system, but it is not the only system or worldview.

Take for example the idea that ‘narrative as data’ metaphor recently put forward on a safety site. Of course narrative is not an object neither can narrative be ‘contained’ as data. This containment metaphor is common in the safety industry and seeks to transform the very idea of narrative from a form of story, and connected events to a quantitative object (see further https://nyshalong.com/public/archive/20150131/20150131_ref.pdf). Once narrative has been falsely objectified then it seems that culture can be controlled. ‘Narrative as data’ is a translation offered by a mono-discipline that confines rather than liberates the meaning of narrative. What such a metaphor as ‘data’ seeks to do is control narrative. Narrative is of course existential and phenomenological and beyond control.

This is what a mono-disciplinary worldview does. It grabs an ecological concept like resilience and then attaches it to the metaphor of engineering creating the idea that resilience is a mechanistic process. Such a use of metaphor is only valid if one accepts the STEM view of the world (https://safetyrisk.net/stem-safety-in-drag/). Whilst is may suit STEM, it doesn’t represent a transdisciplinary view or properly define resilience.

Moreso, the challenges of resilience, risk, fallibility and learning are wicked problems that cannot be controlled by systems or mechanistic processes. Unless one accepts a transdisciplinary view then one will not escape the seduction of control and indeed propose anything ‘different’. Indeed, one will be unable to even tackle a wicked problem (the STEM worldview also tends to reject the language of wickedity). If safety is a Wicked Problem (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-and-safety-as-a-wicked-problem/ ), then it cannot be ‘controlled’ nor ‘tamed’. Indeed, Safety needs a new paradigm if it is ever going to become relevant in a post-modern world. The delusion of control actually amplifies wicked problems and makes them exponentially more wicked.

Of course, this is why Safety has drifted so deeply into theological language and soteriological concepts (https://safetyrisk.net/why-safety-is-inescapably-theological/) because it lacks the transdisciplinarity in conversation to know its own semantics/discourse. Indeed, STEM would have metaphor and semantics relegated to the fanciful world of poetics and emotions. Anything that cannot be validated quantitatively must be rejected and ignored.

Therefore, it is not likely that Safety has ever read Lakoff and Johnson, (1980) Metaphors We Live By (https://nyshalongi.com/public/archive/20150131/20150131_ref.pdf). In many ways this book is a benchmark in research on language, culture and the construction of meaning. Linguistics and semantics are the bedrocks of culture and often omitted from Safety definitions of culture.

Unfortunately, the key to compliance is the rejection of dissent, debate and conversations with the enemy (those who reject zero). Hence, we end up with an industry that brags about its innovations that do little more than shift the deck chairs on the Titanic.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Holistic Responses to Mental Health - April 23, 2022
  • Linguistics, Language and Meaning in Risk - April 20, 2022
  • Is Safety A Virtue Signal? - April 18, 2022
  • Being Emotional and Being Safe - April 16, 2022
  • Understanding Real Risk - April 15, 2022
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: safety controls, STEM, transdisciplinary approach, wicked problems

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Conliffe Wilmot-Simpson says

    February 13, 2020 at 6:29 PM

    Thanks for the article. This is another insight into metaphor and a glance into a world that is decidedly not STEM. https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-the-memory-police-makes-you-see?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Daily_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_110619&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d39924c17c6adf3c23c9&cndid=41176622&esrc=&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Daily

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      February 13, 2020 at 6:29 PM

      1984 indeed! Thanks for the link.

      Reply
  2. Conliffe Wilmot-Simpson says

    November 7, 2019 at 9:13 PM

    Thanks for the article. This is another insight into metaphor and a glance into a world that is decidedly not STEM. https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-the-memory-police-makes-you-see?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Daily_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_110619&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d39924c17c6adf3c23c9&cndid=41176622&esrc=&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Daily

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      November 8, 2019 at 5:31 AM

      1984 indeed! Thanks for the link.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 23,920,973 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,406 other subscribers

NEW! Free Download

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Admin on 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
  • Rob Long on Holistic Responses to Mental Health
  • Steve Nevin on Holistic Responses to Mental Health
  • Raven on 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
  • Rob Long on Understanding Real Risk
  • Musa SULEIMAN on Understanding Real Risk
  • Brian Darlington on Social Psychology Of Risk Workshops
  • Matt Thorne on Social Psychology Of Risk Workshops
  • Rob Long on Is Safety A Virtue Signal?
  • John Davey on Is Safety A Virtue Signal?

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Mapping-Social-Influence-Strategies-diagram-A3-002.pdf (1731 downloads)
  • Stretching At The Workstation (4404 downloads)
  • Hazardous Substances Risk Assessment Form (1740 downloads)
  • Presenting-Dos-and-Donts.pdf (1104 downloads)
  • Zero-to-HRO.docx (1961 downloads)
  • Accident-Incident-Investigation-eBook-Rev1.pdf (9065 downloads)
  • Low-Bridges.pps (3233 downloads)
  • Contractor Risk Assessment Form (3864 downloads)
  • National-Emergency-Risk-Assessment-Guidelines.pdf (2536 downloads)
  • Public-Event-Risk-Management-Checklist-HD.doc (3737 downloads)
  • SAFETY-SLOGANS-LIST.doc (8530 downloads)
  • Real-Risk-Free-Copy.pdf (6441 downloads)
  • Risk-Life-Poster-SPoR.pdf (1212 downloads)
  • Psychologically Safe and Healthy Workplaces: Risk Management Approach Toolkit (3945 downloads)
  • Near Miss or Near Hit (1735 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • Holistic Responses to Mental Health
  • Linguistics, Language and Meaning in Risk
  • Social Psychology Of Risk Workshops
  • Is Safety A Virtue Signal?
  • Being Emotional and Being Safe
  • CLLR–Quarterly Newsletter–April 2022
  • Understanding Real Risk
  • Understanding Humans and How They Tackle Risk
  • How to Know if Safety ‘Works’
  • Programming for Safety, the Performance Myth

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Footer

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,406 other subscribers

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • After the goldrush
    • The Internationale
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • Psychological Core Stability for Wellbeing in Workers Comp
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • In it for The Long Haul – Making the most of the FIFO Lifestyle
    • Who is Responsible for This?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
    • Culture – Edgar Schein
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • Social Psychology Of Risk Workshops
    • CLLR–Quarterly Newsletter–April 2022
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Holistic Responses to Mental Health
    • Linguistics, Language and Meaning in Risk
  • Rob Sams
    • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Barry Spud
    • Things To Consider When Developing And Designing Your Company SWMS
    • Bad Safety Photos
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Simon Cassin
    • Safety values, ideas, behaviours and clothes
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Most commented on

Forecasting Safety

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Dumbs for Safety

The Real Barriers to Safety

Safety as Faith Healing

Who Said We Don’t Need Systems?

Why Safety Controls Don’t Always Work

How to use signs, symbols and text effectively in communicating about risk

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

FEATURED POSTS

Who is Responsible?

No Evidence for the Religion of Zero

Knowing When to Break the Rules

Safety as a Worldview

Due Diligence Workshop Sydney 20,21 February 2019

Risk Leadership

Push or Pull – It’s Not Your Fault – It’s a Norman Door!

The 10 Behaviours of the Safety Sociopath

There is Another Ethic than Zero Accidents

In Praise of Balance in Risk and the Threat of Extremism

Adverse Events: Eliminate or Anticipate?

What If I Valued People And Not Safety?

The Art of the Open Question

Something’s gotta give..

Toward Zero, A Failed Goal

The ‘Noise’ of Safety, Silence and Practicing of Mindfulness

Why Some People Never Achieve

I Just Don’t Know

It’s Always About Paperwork

Zero ‘Arm

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,406 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

 

How To Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

 

 

How to Make your own Covid-19 Face Mask

 

Covid-19 Returning To Work Safety, Transitioning, Start Up And Re Entry Plans

 

How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?

imageOne of the benefits of the Covid-19 epidemic is a total rethink about how we live and work (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/coronavirus-could-reshape-how-australians-work-forever/12097124 ).

Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging

One of the fascinating things about the Coronavirus pandemic is watching Safety morph into epidemiology expertise. I would like a dollar for every flyer, presentation, podcast, powerpoint, checklist template, toolbox talk and poster set that had jumped into my inbox… Read the rest

The Stress of Stasis

One of the challenging things about the Coronavirus crisis is stasis. For those without work and confined to home, for those in self-isolation, it’s like life is frozen in time. ‘Stay at home’ is the mantra. The trouble is, in… Read the rest

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.