One of the most offensive and unethical signals on culture used by Hopkins and Cooper in their chapters in the book Safety Cultures, Safety Models is the language of ‘over-ride’. This is the kind of stuff Safety delights in when it has no ethic of risk. Both authors suggest a desirability to … [Read more...] about Safety Gives Me the Right to ‘Over-Ride’ Your Rite
Safety Culture
R Rated Graphics in Safety
You have to hand it to mono-disciplinary Safety. When it wants to know anything, it consults itself to prove its own bias. Head-in-the-sand safety is alive and well and being peddled through safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/) as something ‘moving forward’, ‘in-depth’ and … [Read more...] about R Rated Graphics in Safety
A Critique on Safety Views on Culture
Recently a group of interested people in SPoR from Australia, Argentina, Europe, Canada, Romania and USA had a discussion on commonly accepted views of culture in safety. All participants are highly experienced managers in risk and safety. The discussion was based on the book Safety Cultures, … [Read more...] about A Critique on Safety Views on Culture
Culture is Cloudy in Safety, and That’s a Good Thing
I read with amusement the book Safety Cultures, Safety Models with so much assertion, assumption, projection, intra-safety confirmation bias and emotive language with little evidence. One of the favourite metaphors in the book is the use of the language of ‘cloud’. Apparently, confusion is … [Read more...] about Culture is Cloudy in Safety, and That’s a Good Thing
What Can Halloween tell us About Safety?
Halloween is not an Australian thing indeed, as a child in the 1960s and 1970s there was simply no interest in Halloween in Australia. However, with growing syncretism between US and Australian cultures since the Vietnam War the festival and commercialism of Halloween has been growing Down Under. A … [Read more...] about What Can Halloween tell us About Safety?
Cultural Semiotics, Just One of Many Silences in Safety Culture
The research and discipline of Cultural Semiotics has been about for 100 years. Cultural Semiotics was first founded by Lotman and others like Cassier and Uspensky and predates the construction of Behaviourism. The discipline of Cultural Semiotics serves as a Transdisciplinary approach to … [Read more...] about Cultural Semiotics, Just One of Many Silences in Safety Culture
Embodied Being as Foundational to Culture and Risk
Computers and AI don’t have fallible bodies and fallible bodies are essential for human learning. Without a fallible body there is no e-motion and emotions are essential for learning. Similarly, computers and AI have no unconscious and most learning occurs in the human unconscious. Similarly, … [Read more...] about Embodied Being as Foundational to Culture and Risk
If You Want to Know About Culture, Don’t Ask Safety
The last 4 books I have read from Safety branded as being about culture, were not about culture and not much about safety and risk. Such is safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/). The four books were: Busch (2021) The First Rule of Safety Culture. Gilbert, Journe, … [Read more...] about If You Want to Know About Culture, Don’t Ask Safety
Something Different To Safety
Something different to Safety I have just finished visiting a client in the mining field and was reflecting on some of the first conversations we had before we started working together. The client only knew what they didn’t want! They didn’t want a disaffected workforce. They … [Read more...] about Something Different To Safety
Take Safety Seriously
Take Safety Seriously This is the edict of the Queensland Resource Council on 13 August 2014, ‘take safety concerns seriously’. The assumption of course is that workers don’t take safety seriously, what an amazing assumption. What else, when ones reality is dictated by injury data. When the data is … [Read more...] about Take Safety Seriously