Ed: Ok, you’ve been asking for it – a practical workplace application of Safety and Risk Psychology Managing the Unexpected Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe published Managing the Unexpected in 2001 and brought many of the principles of the social psychology of organizing into the risk and safety … [Read more...] about Managing the Unexpected
sense making
Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety Analytical philosophy is a branch of philosophy that uses logical analysis to understand the world. The school of thought is most associated with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. It is also connected to the work of the logical positivists … [Read more...] about Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
Sense-Making and Decision-Making in Risk
Sense-Making and Decision-Making in Risk How we understand decision making and sense-making in time constructs how we explain risk and human enactment. Decision-making is about an enactment in the present looking forward (in faith). Sense-making is about how we understand that enactment looking … [Read more...] about Sense-Making and Decision-Making in Risk
An Ethic of Mandate in Safety
An Ethic of Mandate in Safety Ensuring a safe workplace is foundational to WHS: morally, legally and ethically. When it comes to the ‘wicked problem’ (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-and-safety-as-a-wicked-problem/ ) of ethics in risk there are no simple answers or ‘fixes’. Indeed, to speak in … [Read more...] about An Ethic of Mandate in Safety
Reflection Makes Sense
Reflection Makes Sense Organisations, despite their apparent preoccupation with facts, numbers, objectivity, concreteness, and accountability, are in fact saturated with subjectivity, abstraction, guesses, making do, invention and arbitrariness… just like the rest of us. (Weick 1969, p. 5) These … [Read more...] about Reflection Makes Sense
Sensemaking and Signs
Sensemaking and Signs A while ago I wrote an article titled “It’s All in the Sign”. On reflection it is interesting that it generated two different lines of thought. The one line was about non-conscious communication and not overloading our minds and how that is helpful in us managing our everyday … [Read more...] about Sensemaking and Signs
Strategic Business Plans, hierarchically driven
Strategic Business Plans, hierarchically driven – who are the real experts? by Dennis Millard When companies develop safety plans for work scopes, they tend to utilise who they consider to be the experts for the task. Even today we notice key managers, leaders and safety personnel are the … [Read more...] about Strategic Business Plans, hierarchically driven
Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick The contribution of Prof. Karl E. Weick to the genre of social psychology is enormous. (His 5 key texts are listed below). I first read Weick in 1985 as part of my Master’s Thesis at Sydney University and would count my contact with … [Read more...] about Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
