One day when safety understands that a mature approach to ethics is essential for being professional, it might hopefully tackle the essentials in ethical and moral thinking. Unfortunately, documents like the AIHS BoK Chapter on Ethics are so glaringly inadequate it is laughable. It is also clear … [Read more...] about Essentials in Ethics for Safety
Ethics
What Does Safety Know About Ethics?
The brief answer to this question is, not much. A mature study of Ethics is found nowhere in the safety curriculum across the globe. The idea of ethics comes from the root meaning (ethike): character, moral nature, guiding beliefs of a person, group or institution. It was originally used by … [Read more...] about What Does Safety Know About Ethics?
Culture Silences in Safety – Care Ethics
Culture Silences in Safety – Care Ethics One of the strange contradictions of the safety industry is its preoccupation with ‘behaviours’ yet silence on care ethics. Indeed, the fixation on ‘what we do around here’ helps mask silence on ethics as foundational to culture. The last things Safety wants … [Read more...] about Culture Silences in Safety – Care Ethics
SPoR and Disposing of Bad Myths
Continuing our series on Safety Myths – see them all here The power of a myth is its symbolic exchange for an outcome. Myth in itself is not bad, it depends on the purpose and ethic of the myth. The same with ritual. The first question we need to ask when it comes to myth and ritual in safety is: … [Read more...] about SPoR and Disposing of Bad Myths
The Complacency Myth
Continuing our series on Safety Myths – see them all here Like all unethical myths, the myth of complacency is perhaps one of the worst. The language of complacency is rife in the safety industry and is premised on the nonsense idea that people desire self-harm. This myth is based on the nonsense … [Read more...] about The Complacency Myth
Myths, Ethics and Enactment in Risk
Baudrillard (1929-2007) articulates well the myths of our consumer society in The Consumer Society, Myths and Structures (1998, Sage, London). In this deconstruction Baudrillard builds on the work The System of Objects and demonstrates how humans make objects ‘sacred’ through symbolism, consumption, … [Read more...] about Myths, Ethics and Enactment in Risk
The Risk Matrix Myth
There are many other ways of knowing that could be offered in Safety other than those of science, engineering and behaviourism. One’s worldview is one’s bias, especially when it comes to the construction of models as myths in safety. There is no such thing as non-bias or non-prejudice when it comes … [Read more...] about The Risk Matrix Myth
Moral Fundamentalism in Safety
The worst feature of the AIHS BoK Chapter on Ethics is moral fundamentalism. Whilst the silences in the Chapter on personhood, care, power and helping are damming, what stands out most is a foundational encouragement for moral fundamentalism. This is assisted by blending the meaning of morality and … [Read more...] about Moral Fundamentalism in Safety
Not a Profession’s Bootlace
How easy to let that word ‘professional’ roll off your tongue, when you are not in a profession! How easy to brand something that it is not and then wonder why people walk away in droves (icare-workers-compensation-insider-speaks-out). How easy to spruik zero harm when it’s the opposite … [Read more...] about Not a Profession’s Bootlace
More Safety Code to Disguise Behaviourism
It’s always entertaining when Safety talks about what it believes in and it’s ‘values’ by omitting what it believes in and naming its values. Such is safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/). Take for example this piece, clearly Behaviourist (SHP meets Bertrand Gibert) that … [Read more...] about More Safety Code to Disguise Behaviourism
