It is so easy to let the words ‘professional’, ‘just culture’ and ‘no blame’ roll off the lips and yet do nothing about the founding philosophies (https://safetyrisk.net/a-philosophy-of-safety/) that plague the safety industry.
Moreso, it seems that slogans like ‘no blame’ now create a unique arrogance of superiority, as if blame is some kind of inherent evil. But where you hear this ‘no blame’ language you don’t hear anything about fallibility, anger, shame, depression, jurisprudence or Everyday Social Resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/), so essential in understanding the dynamics of blame. De-coupling blame from these dynamics is meaningless, what Safety does so well.
Even when Safety speaks of ‘just culture’ repeating the nonsense of James Reason, a philosophy of Justice is never articulated. Indeed, most definitions of ‘just culture’ I read in safety have very little to do with culture and a great deal to do with the safety favourites – behaviours and systems. Behaviours and systems are NOT culture.
Of course, none of this simplistic ‘no blame’ discourse and ‘just culture’ ideology comes without trade-offs and by-products (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753523001893). So much of this rhetoric about ‘no blame’ is simplistic goop that ensures that the underlying philosophies of Behaviourism, Positivism and Scientism remain untouched. The language remains about: systems, performance, measurement, controls, systems, capacity, zero and systems etc.
Even the pithy slogan ‘blame fixes nothing’ is just simplistic goop in the face of the thrust of the Regulation and Legislation in safety that seeks accountability and blame. In the legal world where safety goes if anything goes pear shaped, there will be blame and accountability. Poor old slogan safety, where rhetoric and noise determine an ethic of being professional.
In the face of a wicked problem (https://safetyrisk.net/update-free-workshop-on-wicked-problems-with-matt-thorne/) the slogan ‘blame fixes nothing’ is dumb. This is one of the things the HOP group claims it doesn’t do, be dumb (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-4ds-learningteams). Wicked problems (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-wicked-problem/) have no solution and the more your try to fix them, the worse they become (https://safetyrisk.net/no-taming-or-fixing-wicked-problems/). The problem is not so much the blame but the delusion of ‘fixing’.
In the context of the rhetoric of ‘no blame’ there are many other complex factors that are at play in unconscious hidden energies that are just as destructive and harmful to persons.
If there is no shift in methodology (philosophy) there is no shift in method. What happens in these so called ‘no blame cultures’ (https://safetyrisk.net/shame-and-blame-as-social-semiosis/) is that blame goes underground and re-surfaces in other forms.
The trouble is, once the words ‘no blame’ is mentioned that seems enough. Once the word ‘professional’ is stated safety becomes professional. Of course, there is no need now to study or research moral philosophy, personhood (https://safetyrisk.net/the-problem-of-blame-for-fallible-people/) or Ethics. Somehow these have no connection to a determination of good or bad, blame and shame (https://safetyrisk.net/the-rights-and-wrongs-of-what-is-right-and-wrong/).
Safety is now set up perfectly for a ‘self-righteous culture’, where the safety bad people are relegated to the out-group and the no-blame crusaders are the good people in-group. It gets even worse when Safety decides to spruik a theology of no-blame and atonement (https://safetyrisk.net/the-theology-of-blame-from-safety-science/) from non-theologians.
Where can Safety go with all this?
- The first thing to do is to avoid simplistic slogans that disguise the complexities and realities of human fallible living in risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/).
- The second is to avoid simplistic binary philosophies that mask the wickedity of culture, risk and learning.
- The third and most vital thing is, to start studying culture, learning and risk from a Transdisciplinary perspective that includes study of moral philosophy, Ethics and Philosophy.
The current rhetoric of ‘no blame’ is simplistic and fosters an arrogance and blindness to the realities of an ethic of risk. It creates an ‘in-group’ that no longer needs to engage with the need to shift in fundamental philosophy (methodology) and ethic. In this way one can shout noise from the rooftops about being ‘new’ and ‘different’ and do nothing and then point back at traditional safety in FIGJAM safety (https://safetyrisk.net/figjam-safety/). In this way not-so-different safety can jump up and down with no method and keep talking about systems, measurement, performance and no blame and shift the blame underground.
If you want to study wicked problems and the challenges this brings to safety you can join the free workshops here: https://safetyrisk.net/update-free-workshop-on-wicked-problems-with-matt-thorne/
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- Hey Safety, What’s Your Worldview? - December 12, 2024
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- More Nonsense from the EHS Insight – Zero Injury Cultures??? - December 8, 2024
- Safety is an Art - December 7, 2024
- When Risk Doesn’t Make Sense - December 7, 2024
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