Work has never been as safe as it seems today. Safety has also never been as bureaucratized as it is today. Over the past two decades, the number of safety rules and statutes has exploded, and organizations themselves are creating ever more internal compliance requirements. At the same time, progress on safety has slowed to a crawl. Many incident- and injury rates have flatlined. Worse, excellent safety performance on low-consequence events tends to increase the risk of fatalities and disasters. Bureaucracy and compliance now seem less about managing the safety of the workers we are responsible for, and more about managing the liability of the people they work for. We make workers do a lot that does nothing to improve their success locally. Paradoxically, such tightening of safety bureaucracy robs us of exactly the source of human insight, creativity and resilience that can tell us how success is actually created, and where the next accident may well happen. It is time for Safety Anarchists: people who trust people more than process, who rely on horizontally coordinating experiences and innovations, who push back against petty rules and coercive compliance, and who help recover the dignity and expertise of human work.
The Anarchist Cookbook will shock, it will disturb, it will provoke. It places in historical perspective an era when "Turn on, Burn down, Blow up" are revolutionary slogans of the day. Says the author" "This book... is not written for the members of fringe political groups, such as the Weatherman, or The Minutemen. Those radical groups don't need this book. They already know everything that's in here. If the real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive, they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book." In what the author considers a survival guide, there is explicit information on the uses and effects of drugs, ranging from pot to heroin to peanuts. There i detailed advice concerning electronics, sabotage, and surveillance, with data on everything from bugs to scramblers. There is a comprehensive chapter on natural, non-lethal, and lethal weapons, running the gamut from cattle prods to sub-machine guns to bows and arrows.
The second edition of a bestseller, Safety Differently: Human Factors for a New Era is a complete update of Ten Questions About Human Error: A New View of Human Factors and System Safety. Today, the unrelenting pace of technology change and growth of complexity calls for a different kind of safety thinking. Automation and new technologies have resu
I spent most of the 70's living by definition as a part time student in the UK. I was more intoxicated by the 'school of life', rather than the tedious dedication to the university lecture hall. This preoccupation took me by way of Newcastle, via London, to of all places Plymouth Devon. I have managed to take myself back to this period using music as an ‘astral time machine’. Every memory has a soundtrack, and ‘Classic Rock’ of this era was a driving force encompassing much of the countercultures’ collective mindset. It was a decade of reflection, brought about by stagnation and conflict. The Vietnam War, The Cold War, The IRA, The PLO, The Red Army Faction, and let's face it by definition chaos. It appeared armed insurrection was the modality chosen by some to effectuate change. It was a time of high unemployment, strikes and inflation, the Irish question, the political scandals; where Britain teetered on the brink. It was a period where I dropped out, hoping by doing so, my brief infatuation with borderline anarchy would allow me to live and enjoy life encapsulated in my own little world. I found myself hunkering down with a small group of like-minded scoundrels, tipsy, as we tottered somewhere between nihilistic intention and anarchistic intervention. We decided the best way to deal with the uncertainty was to simply poke fun and hatch a prank or two, all while we ignored the possibility of incarceration. The aftermath usually led us to the closest pub, where we would covertly hide behind the blur of excess and the ensuing laughter. This was the gestation that gave birth to the ‘Scilly Pranksters’. It is where ‘Monty Python’ met ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House’, and the cast ended up partying with ‘Cheech and Chong’. The jocular hilarity will allow the reader to meet and follow the exploits of ‘the gang’, as we plotted or simply found ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Diary of an Anarchist’s Apprentice ravages mainstream society tackling its deficiencies in a parodistic way, sprinkling just enough satire to keep the beat, as we hitched rides through, politics, religion, the drug culture, the ‘New Age’, the occult, free love, and the music explosion. These memoirs capture a collection of 20 escapades, etched in time as ‘legend’ rather than myth or drug induced fantasy. They feature comedic episodes such as our extemporaneous decision to leave our mark on a Vulcan bomber during a low level display, which highlighted the Queen’s Silver Jubilee; the plot to borrow a diesel powered sub from her Majesty’s scrap yard so we could perform our rendition of a ‘Yellow Submarine’; the divine hand of God intervening to save a group of nuns after their car lost control, coincidentally after a rather prodigious Polish Kielbasa appeared to manifest where one’s manhood should have been sheltered; the unforgettable sequence of events leading up to an impromptu meeting of wannabee anarchists and witches enjoying the warmth of a fire during a ‘black mass’; and of course as an encore, a ‘close encounter’ of the strange kind, ‘high’ atop a Tor where UFOs had the nerve to interrupt our quest to find God, and apologize for some, but not all of our past transgressions. These and other short stories are strategically placed, preserving an informal time-line that encompassed the decade of the 70’s.
In this book, Sidney Dekker sets out to identify the market mechanisms that explain how less government paradoxically leads to greater compliance burdens. This book gives shape and substance to a suspicion that has become widespread among workers in almost every industry: we have to follow more rules than ever—and still, things can go spectacularly wrong. Much has been privatized and deregulated, giving us what is sometimes known as ‘new public management,’ driven by neoliberal, market-favoring policies. But, paradoxically, we typically have more rules today, not fewer. It’s not the government: it’s us. This book is the first of a three-part series on the effects of ‘neoliberalism,’ which promotes the role of the private sector in the economy. Compliance Capitalism examines what aspects of the compliance economy, what mechanisms of bureaucratization, are directly linked to us having given free markets a greater reign over our political economy. The book steps through them, picking up the evidence and levers for change along the way. Dekker’s work has always challenged readers to embrace more humane, empowering ways to think about work and its quality and safety. In Compliance Capitalism, Dekker extends his reach once again, writing for all managers, board members, organization leaders, consultants, practitioners, researchers, lecturers, students, and investigators curious to understand the genuine nature of organizational and safety performance.
This book examines the cybersecurity phenomenon, looking at the folklore, the hype, and the behaviour of its practitioners. A central theme is that the management of cybersecurity needs to be owned by the people running the organisation, rather than by the cybersecurity team, who frequently don’t have management as a core skill. In order to effect that change, managers need to have the background and detail to challenge what they are being told, enabling them to engage in a way that will result in more appropriate outcomes for the business. This book provides that background and detail. It debunks a number of cyber-myths, and calls out basic errors in the accepted thinking on cyber. The content is strongly rooted in available research and presented in an accessible manner, with a number of business-related case studies. Each chapter in the book takes a theme such as end-user behaviours and compares the available evidence with what the industry would like to have its customers believe. The conclusion is that there is definitely a problem, and we certainly need cyber defences. Just not the ones the industry is currently selling.
Post Normal Accident revisits Perrow’s classic Normal Accident published in 1984 and provides additional insights to our sociological view of safety-critical organisations. The operating landscape of high-risk systems has indeed profoundly changed in the past 20 to 30 years but the core sociological models of safety remain associated with classics of the 1980s and 1990s. This book examines the conceptual and empirical evolutions of the past two to three decades to explore their implications for safety management based on several strands of works in various research traditions in safety (e.g. cognitive engineering and system safety, high-reliability organisation, sociology of safety, regulatory studies) and other interdisciplinary fields (e.g. international business, globalisation studies, strategy management, ecology). It offers a new and insightful interpretation to the challenges of today. It investigates how globalisation has reconfigured the operating landscape of high-risk systems and emphasises the importance of thinking safety through a strategic angle. This book serves as an ideal resource for the safety professionals and safety researchers from any established disciplines such as sociology, engineering, psychology, political science or management. Features: Introduces an original analysis of popular safety writings, including Normal Accident, by Perrow Identifies the importance of thinking safety from a sociological angle with the help of key writers Stresses the need for greater sensitivity to strategy and "errors from the top" when it comes to the safety of high-risk systems Explains how globalisation has reconfigured the operating landscape of high-risk systems Renews our understanding of the current safety management challenges in an increasingly global risk picture
This text uses a case-based approach to share knowledge and techniques on how to operationalize much of the theoretical underpinnings of hospital quality and safety. Written and edited by leaders in healthcare, education, and engineering, these 22 chapters provide insights as to where the field of improvement and safety science is with regards to the views and aspirations of healthcare advocates and patients. Each chapter also includes vignettes to further solidify the theoretical underpinnings and drive home learning. End of chapter commentary by the editors highlight important concepts and connections between various chapters in the text. Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare: A Case-Based Approach presents a novel approach towards hospital safety and quality with the goal to help healthcare providers reach zero harm within their organizations.
Aimed at those who are responsible for the overall performance of organisations, divisions or departments in diverse industries such as healthcare, aviation, construction, oil and gas, nuclear, railways and defence, this book introduces a new safety paradigm in comprehensible and practical terms. It aims at improving safety and overall organisational performance through a doable, different and directed approach using multiple small steps. This book will help readers in understanding how to integrate the natural variability of human performance – and our ability to compensate for unpredictability elsewhere – into organisational systems, thereby ensuring successful outcomes. It covers important topics, including complexity, effective workplace innovations, micro-experiments, maintaining alignment between rules and reality, maximising learning and restoring relations. It includes practical examples and supporting material referenced in the expansive notes section. This book: Presents multiple small steps that collectively facilitate the improvement of safety Discusses improving safety in routine work;, not triggered by accidents Covers a chapter on what to do when things go wrong Discusses these methods with the help of numerous vignettes Has a separate section on each industry Safety professionals, academicians, researchers and students (undergraduate and graduate) in health and safety, human factors, ergonomics, occupational health and safety will also appreciate the brevity and clarity of this work in conveying the latest scientific insights on safety.
