Safety; a system state or property?

Abstract

Safety is frequently addressed as an emergent property of complex and dynamic systems. This contribution advocates the validity and importance of incorporating intrinsic technological hazards and systemic interrelations from a multi-actor perspective in the early phases of design and development. This perspective creates inherent properties in various system states, which may manifest themselves as emergent properties during operations. These safety properties are based on their business models, selectively focusing on primary system components such as infrastructure, vehicles or traffic management. Experiences with major aviation and railway projects highlight the potential of engineering design approaches such as multidisciplinary design optimization, value engineering and vectorial state/space modelling. Such an approach has high change potential for a specific category of high energy density complex socio-technical systems. Management System (SMS) that is predominantly based on Western concepts of management. The influence of national culture on a military organisational culture, the perception and behaviour of the military members, and how management handles safety issues in the organisation were investigated and identified. To discover and understand the basic assumptions of a culture that drive people to a particular behaviour, a qualitative research design, encompassing multiple case studies, was adopted for this study. Analysis of the findings shows that the Indonesian military culture has been much influenced by its national culture. Moreover, the unique characteristics of the Indonesian national and military culture have significant influences on military SMS. Harmony, politeness, hierarchical systems, authoritarian structures, the military class system and the ‘can-do’ culture are some of the cultural factors that impede the promotion of safety culture as well as the implementation of the SMS within the Indonesian military organisation. In addition to those cultural factors, the lack of safety education and training has created an environment in which individual safety awareness is disregarded. The results of this study demonstrate that cultural factors are one of the crucial factors that must be integrated into the organisation’s system in order to achieve safety.<br /><br />