Safe operation as a social construct

Abstract

Empirical work on organizations that manage complex, potentially hazardous technical operations with a surprisingly low rate of serious incidents shows that operational safety is more than the management or avoidance of risk or error. Safety so defined is an ongoing intersubjective construct not readily measured in terms of safety cultures, structures, functions, or other commonly used descriptors of technical or organizational attributes that fail fully to take into account collective as well as individual agency. In the cases that the author has studied, it is represented by the interactive dynamic between operators and managers, as well as their engagement with operational and organizational conditions. The maintenance of safe operation so defined is an interactive, dynamic and communicative act, hence it is particularly vulnerable to disruption or distortion by well-meant but imperfectly informed interventions aimed at eliminating or reducing ‘human error’ that do not take into account the importance of the processes by which the construction of safe operation is created and maintained.