Have you ever considered who shoulders the blame when technology fails us catastrophically? Today’s paper by Dr. Katherine Elizabeth Kenny, “Blaming Deadmen: Causes, Culprits, and Chaos in Accounting for Technological Accidents” examines the complex web of causes behind technological accidents. We examine the chilling case of the Waterfall rail tragedy, unraveling the layers of human judgment, mechanical failure, and the systemic implications that ripple through our safety practices. Kenny's...

Could the key to transforming workplace safety lie within the realm of virtual reality? In today’s episode, we explore the exciting domain of digital twins—a technological marvel with the potential to overhaul how we approach operational safety across various industries.

Could what we perceive as the bedrock of workplace safety be merely an illusion? Safety audits are supposed to be our safeguard, but Ben Hutchinson, PhD student from the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University, is here to shatter some long-held beliefs. Ben is a National HSEQ Manager, Fatigue Specialist and Exercise Physiologist with a focus on adaptive and system principles - including system safety. He brings to light the potential gap between the comforting assurance of...

Have you ever wondered about the tightrope walk that subcontractors do, balancing on the edge of safety in high-hazard industries? Our exploration into the world of subcontracting safety is eye-opening and crucial, as we dissect the factors that leave these workers more vulnerable to workplace accidents. This episode serves as an investigation into the findings of the paper, "Behind Subcontractor Risk: A Multiple Case Study Analysis of Mining and Natural Resources Fatalities," by Charan Teja...

Who would have thought that ‘safety in the workplace’ would eventually extend to our homes? As we navigate the new normal, work-from-home arrangements have emerged as a key component of business continuity plans. This episode unravels the intricacies of health and safety management for remote workers, as we investigate the findings of the paper, "A Systems Model for the Design of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, Inclusive of Work from Home Arrangements," published in the...

Can you envision your organization setting a goal that seems impossible to achieve? Join David and Drew as they dissect the paradox of stretch goals and discuss the overarching impact of aspirational objectives on an organization's performance. We take you through the controversial concept of ‘zero harm’ and why it's so scarcely represented in academic literature.

David and Drew discuss a research paper published this year in the Journal of Safety Research entitled “Exploring Bias in Incident Investigations: An Empirical Examination Using Construction Case Studies” by Sreeja Thallapureddy et al.

In this episode, David and Drew discuss the role and impact of senior leadership safety visits and management walkarounds in safety management programs. The episode explores how management walkarounds can influence staff perception and the effectiveness of safety programs, and scrutinizes how the same general initiative can have different outcomes depending on its implementation.

In this episode, David and Drew dig into the potential link between psychology and workplace safety, specifically how personality tests could predict safety performance. They’ll review the research on the connection between personality traits and safety performance, examining how traits like extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness can influence work behaviors. The episode also explores the potential impact of institutional logic on the link between personality and safety...

In this episode, we’ll discuss the paper entitled, “Tracking the right path: Safety performance indicators as boundary objects in air ambulance services”, by Jan Hayes, Tone Njølstad Slotsvik, Carl Macrae, Kenneth Arne Pettersen Gould. It was published in Volume 163 of Safety Science.

In this episode, we’ll discuss a study suggested through LinkedIn by Bridget/Brigid? one of our listeners. Published by a research and consultancy/advocacy organization called Autonomy, the paper is titled, “The Results Are In: The UK's Four-Day Week Pilot”. Published in February 2023, this is a non-peer-reviewed paper and the research methodology is a bit skewed as a “pilot” instead of a controlled trial, but still contains valuable results that we’ll discuss.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the Australian Work Health and Safety (WHS) Strategy for 2023–2033 put out by Safe Work Australia - an Australian Government statutory agency established in 2009. Safe Work Australia includes Members from the Commonwealth, and each state and territory, Members representing the interests of workers and Members representing the interests of employers.

In this episode, we’ll discuss a 1993 paper by Jonathan Baron, titled “Why Teach Thinking - An Essay” published in Applied Psychology: An International Review. Jonathan Baron is an American psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in the science of decision-making.

In this episode, we’ll discuss a paper from one of the giants of organizational psychology, Edgar Schein. Schein recently passed away at age of 98. His work has influenced not just safety practitioners but also safety academics over the past few years. His approach to organizational leadership intersected with some of the resilience in safety II and safety differently motivated ideas. We first considered discussing his book, Humble Inquiry, (see link in Resources) but instead decided on his...

Welcome to our first episode of 2023. In this episode, we’ll discuss the paper entitled, “Measurement Schmeasurement: Questionable Measurement Practices and How to Avoid Them” authored by Prof. Jessica Kay Flake and Assoc. Prof. Eiko I. Fried.  It was published in 2020 in the journal Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the paper entitled, “Repentance as Rebuke: Betrayal and Moral Injury in Safety Engineering” by Sidney W. A. Dekker, Mark D. Layson & David D. Woods. The paper was part of a series published in the journal of Science and Engineering Ethics, volume 28, in 2022.

In this episode, we’ll be discussing the paper entitled, “Managing risk in hazardous conditions: improvisation is not enough” by Rene Amalberti and Charles Vincent (2019), published in BMJ Quality & Safety. Though the paper is focused on the healthcare industry, we can extrapolate the findings to safety in other industries. We’ll discuss the need for different or modified levels of acceptable safety measures in “degraded operations” when 100% adherence to safety rules is simply not possible.

In our last episode, we touched on nuclear safety, and so we’ve decided to dig a little deeper into that topic on today’s podcast. We’ll be discussing the paper entitled, “Disowning Fukushima: Managing the credibility of nuclear reliability assessment in the wake of disaster.” by John Downer (2014), published in the journal Regulation & Governance.

In our very special 100th episode, we attempt to answer our title question with a discussion around the book, “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” by Charles Perrow. This book was first published in 1984, but later editions were released in 1999 and beyond.

The reluctance to drop one’s tools when threat intensifies, and the reasons behind not dropping them, is the focus of the paper we are examining in this episode. We are discussing the 1996 paper “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies” by Karl Weick.  The paper compares and contrasts two tragic events involving firefighers who perished because they did not drop their tools to run (Mann Gulch, in 1949, and South Canyon in 1994) with ten principles laid out by James Thompson,...

Can an 80-year-old research experiment provide any valuable insight into today’s work environments?

In this episode, we’ll be discussing another listener-suggested paper, from the journal of Safety Science, May 2022 - “Rewarding safety performance: Improving safety or maintaining beliefs?” by Bitara et al.

After a long unplanned break, we’re back! During the break, we were very happy to see our inboxes fill up with topic ideas from our listeners, and in this episode, we’ll be digging into one of those suggestions - “The Seductions of Clarity” by C. Thi Nguyen from the University of Utah.

We realized that this episode will be our first “three-person” podcast discussion.We’ve invited Jop Havinga, co-author of today’s paper and fellow Griffith University colleague, to join us. Our discussion today centers around the paper “Should We Cut the Cards?"