How one ‘performs’ is a subjective judgement enacted by those in power who rarely disclose their methodology. Indeed, any focus on ‘performance’ above a focus on personhood, usually hides vices of efficiency, production, economic cost, organising and orderliness.
Toxic workplaces and cultures are characterised by such vices that are usually paraded as virtues.
The selection of what one defines as a ‘virtue’ emerges from a declared moral philosophy. Most often in safety this is not disclosed, which is unethical. We rarely see articulates in safety an open declaration of motivations or ideology.
Any value or language that demonises persons is neither virtuous nor educative.
The notion of a virtue sits to the side of one’s moral philosophy and methodology that has evolved from a culture and ‘worldview’ (See Figure 1. A Map of Ethics to Outcomes)
Figure 1. A Map of Ethics to Outcomes
This map represents a comprehensive understanding of where critical elements of an Ethic relate to each other. The map helps differentiate various elements that are tossed about in safety as if they are interchangeable. This is demonstrated in the amateur AIHS BoK Chapter of non-Ethics that projects that moral and ethics are the same thing. This is the chapter that has no discussion on the nature of power, zero or a host of critical issues in understanding ethics.
Plucking out a few subjective things one wants to declare as ‘virtues’ is meaningless without a clearly articulated moral philosophy and worldview.
This is how the ideology of Technique makes efficiency a virtue (Ellul). The opposite is the case. The ideology of efficiency prioritises the needs of systems and production over the well-being of persons. We see this in the hidden agenda of ‘Resilience Engineering’ (RE). RE is not about the resilience of persons but rather the resilience of systems. The same is the case for ‘Human Factors’ safety. In SPoR, we don’t consider humans as a ‘factor’ in a systems.
The reality is that life and work are not ordered or efficient. This is the nature of fallible moral people working in fallible organisations and systems. Work and living is often disordered and messy, most often risk in fallible organisations is a ‘wicked problem’.
Wicked problems cannot be ‘harnessed’, ‘controlled’ or ‘fixed’.
When the priority is on ‘performance’ of systems, humans usually come last (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-the-nature-of-performance-and-hop/).
The language of ‘performance’ infers the measurement of performance and this is completely subjective, usually according to an undeclared methodology/philosophy.
Traditional safety has always been about measuring the performance of a system according to injury rates. This is attributed as having some meaning for safety.
Injury rates have no connection to the qualitative analysis of whether a system is safe or not. This is why Greg Smith’s book throws out the challenge to ‘Prove Safety’ (https://safetyrisk.net/proving-safety-a-book-review/).
A zero-injury rate is a meaningless indicator of safety. Indeed, a focus on injury rates is a distraction from a focus on what matters in risk. Counting hazards and controlling hazards takes the focus away from risk and the subjectivity of how fallible people make decisions.
Focusing of the primacy of injury rates usually relegates the value of persons to somewhere down the order of importance. Then it is assumes that a high injury rates is a measure of poor performance in safety. All of this is a concoction of traditional safety governed by undeclared methodologies anchored in behaviourism and engineering.
When you drive into those companies with injury rate boards at the entrance, what is being said is that: ‘This company puts numbers first’ and ‘metrics drive management’.
Whenever I have been asked into an organisation that loves the language of ‘high performance’, there is a hidden toxicity that leads to high stressors, people getting sick and low morale. The philosophy that dominates management is always about ‘utility’ and how people are ‘used’, not on who people are.
The silly slogan from ‘safety differently’ that states: ‘people are not a problem to control but a solution to harness’ demonstrates the point. The metaphor of harnessing is a metaphor of control. The slogan is a double statement of the same thing. This is a nonsense slogan that hides an ideology of control and power. When you want to harness anything, you want to control it, and have power over it. Sorry folks, I am not an object to ‘harness’.
We see from this in all slogans that hide an undeclared methodology (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-slogans-in-safety-2/). The emphasis on slogans is usually the first sign of hidden agenda, propaganda and hidden methodology.
Dr Rob Long
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