Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In these examples, managed safety does not breed lack of safety, but
acceptable risk: high performance is sustained with no adverse impact
o n s a f e t y.
The construction of safety
Regulated safety and managed safety are therefore constantly inter-
twined within the workers themselves, but also at the level of organi-
zations (reconstruction of rules and supervision by managers). We will
make a distinction between four types of organizational conditions that
foster the construction of safety, where operators and managers develop
shared knowledge regarding issues of safety:
• Processes of 'integrated' design of rules that link together top-down
and bottom-up processes
• Taking into account the collective aspects of work in organizations
and training programs, allowing each person to know about the
activity of others, and to take this knowledge into account in his or
her own activity
• The dynamics of collective decision-making, which make it possible
to discuss the situations encountered and to construct a common
frame of reference
• A mode of management, which places a premium on understanding
the decisions made by agents rather than on calling them to order,
and on autonomy and responsible behaviour on the part of stake-
holders, all of whom are seeking shared and reasoned trade-offs
The integrated design of rules
The categorization scheme and the examples presented above consider
only the users/adapters/inventors of rules at the sharp end. Yet, system
safety does not rely solely on field workers, as has been shown in the anal-
ysis of various disasters (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the explosion of
the BP refinery in Texas City, etc.) One cannot ignore the role played by
the designers of formal rules and by management. These are heavyweight
stakeholders in the construction of safety.
An approach grounded in the integrated design of rules implies that
the rules are not just learned and applied, but also understood by the
workers. This means, on the one hand, that the rules must be grounded in
an analysis of work activity, and on the other hand, that 'the rationale that
these rules are based on' and their 'organization into a system that is con-
sistent for action' are all handed down to the workers they are intended
for (Mayen and Savoyant, 1999, our translation). Hence, designing rules
