Benoît Journé - Böcker

This open access book addresses several questions regarding the implementation of human and organisational factors (HOF) so that recent improvements in industrial safety can be built upon.

This open access book provides an analytical and critical outlook, by leading scholars, of the impact of various trends in the quality of collaboration and resulting safety outcomes that arise from the evolution of traditional integrated production within a single firm into a complex web of partnerships and supply chains.

This open access book addresses the idea that there are two ways to go about achieving a safe working environment. The text challenges the prevailing notion that compliance with a rule system, imposed from the top of an organization and designed to anticipate possible hazards in system operation, is really incompatible with the idea that the professional expertise of front-line workers is what promotes safe outcomes despite inevitable unanticipated perturbations. The contributors, drawn from academic and industrial backgrounds, demonstrate that rather than being at odds with each other, rules-compliance and proactivity are in fact complementary resources the coexistence of which increases safety. Furthermore, the implications of this approach extend beyond safety, being relevant to business performance, strategies for innovation and system resilience as well.The book steps back from an exclusive focus on front-line work to explore the way in which compliance and initiative are articulated at different levels within the hierarchy of a firm, right up to that of top management. Further, the contributors analyze the way in which safety authorities, the justice system, and the general public perceive and interpret such strategies, in particular in the aftermath of major events.This book deals with issues of interest to researchers and graduate students in safety science and organization studies and to members of expert bodies and experts in industry and consultancy concerned with similar subjects.

This open access book addresses relationships that develop from the complex set of legislative, regulatory, and institutional arrangements that arise in the governance of high-hazard industries, especially those connected with safety. It analyses the difference in practices between high-hazard sectors such as nuclear power, chemical processing, and transport with those in the finance and healthcare sectors. The relationship between regulating and regulated entities is important in ensuring that safety is not subordinated to other concerns and in maintaining public confidence. As a result, the brief addresses various pressures and trade-offs inherent in that relationship, trade-offs between such considerations as:cost of the oversight activity and its effectiveness;regulator independence and its level of competency and understanding of the risks involved;ability to provide advice on meeting regulatory goals and being able to criticize decisions made; andeffectiveness and intrusion in operational activities.  The contributors show how, over time, a more horizontal or “decentred” approach to regulatory oversight has appeared, with a larger degree of delegation of certain decisions to industry and a greater role for a range of third parties such as certification bodies, auditors, insurers, industry associations and NGOs.  This book is of interest to academics working in the fields of safety science or organizational management and to practitioners, regulators and policy-makers concerned with health and safety and critical infrastructure.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book investigates why, despite more and more resources devoted to safety training, expectations are not entirely met, particularly in the industrial sectors that have already achieved a high safety level.