Hervé Laroche

Taking off the Heat: Narrative Sensemaking in Post-crisis Inquiry Reports:

Crises represent moments when sensemaking fails. Official reports of post-crisis analyses re-establish patterns of sensemaking. Whereas scholars agree on the narrative basis of post-crisis sensemaking, the means by which meaning is recreated about the confusing events have not been fully investigated. To fill this gap, empirical data are drawn from the series of investigations that took place after the sudden and deadly heat wave that occurred in France during the summer of 2003. Introducing tools from narratology, this article analyses how these reports restore meaning by addressing the following questions: What happened? Was it foreseeable? and Who is responsible? The key narrative choices implied are mapped. A typology of crisis plots is proposed. Building on this typology, the article demonstrates that successive reports progressively built a focused, simplified story about the crisis. Methodological and practical implications for scholars and practitioners using inquiry reports for research and learning are also discussed.

Errors and Failures: Towards a New Safety Paradigm

In France studies on technological risks began to question errors, failures and vulnerabilities at the end of the 1970s, focusing mostly on analyzing major accidents as consequences of the increasing complexity of socio‐technical systems. During the 1980s and 1990s, research studies carried out in different fields (industrial risks, natural risks, health risks) underlined the importance of organizational factors in system vulnerabilities. Still, the bases of safety policies and safety management remained unchanged, with a strong reliance on rules and procedures. Building on an interdisciplinary reflection carried out at the beginning of the 2000s, this paper calls into question the prevailing approach as regards safety. Identifying the basic assumptions behind safety policies, it is argued that, in light of research advances in various fields of safety studies – and more specifically in cognitive ergonomics – they appear to be basically flawed. In a quite radical manner, a recognition of errors and failures as a part of the usual functioning of socio‐technical systems, which are “naturally” unstable systems, is called for. As for risk control, it appears to result mainly from the capacity of operators, working groups and organisations for dynamically “making up” for errors and failures. These analyses open very stimulating prospects of research. However, the question of their social and political acceptability must be seriously considered.

Beyond Safety Training

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. It not only reflects the most precious viewpoints of experts from different disciplines, different countries, with experiences in various industrial fields at the cutting edge of theories and practices in terms of safety, professionalization and their relationships. It also consolidates the positioning of the Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture, highlighting what is currently considered at stake in terms of safety training, taking into account the system of constraints the different stakeholders are submitted to. It reports some success stories as well as elements which could explain the observed plateau in terms of outcome. It identifies some levers for evolution for at-risk industry and outlines a possible research agenda to go further with experimental solutions.

The Commodification of Safety Culture and How to Escape It

Safety culture is a highly successful idea. Whatever your understanding of this idea, and whether you like it or not, you cannot ignore it. Safety culture has become a commodity (a product) that is promoted by various actors and enacted by various tools and practices. I first describe the ‘safety culture system’ that produces this commodification process. Then I discuss its upsides and downsides. Finally, I argue that, rather than debating on whether safety culture is a good idea or not, we should try to get the most of it by playing within the system that sustains the commodifying of safety culture. I suggest that safety culture should be taken as a vocabulary and as an asset. I also propose that rejuvenating the idea will come from introducing new actors into the system of safety culture.

Beyond Safety Training, Toward Professional Development

Professional development in safety lies at the crossroads of various logics, each with their own objectives, limits and power games. The arbitration and choices that are made at different levels (individual, collective and organizational) are therefore subject to constraints. It is of major importance to be aware of these constraints, to take them into consideration and recognize them in order to identify the levers for improvement in safety performance. This chapter synthesises the main findings from the book, highlighting what is currently considered to be at stake in terms of safety training, in the industrial world (industry and other stakeholders such as regulatory authorities), and offers avenues for further research.

Captain Kirk, Managers and the Professionalization of Safety

Historically, management as a means for governing business organizations has developed at the expense of professions as autonomous, self-regulated bodies. Therefore, the current call for “professionalization” in the domain of safety might be surprising. This chapter explores this apparent contradiction in the form of an imaginary dialogue between an operator and a manager. The current “injunction to professionalism” is critically assessed. Alternative views of professionalization are developed, with implications for alternative managerial roles.

Executives and Decisions

The senior executive is often perceived as the final decision-maker in the firm. Studies in decision-making in organisations show that decisions are the result of many forces and influences, over which the executive does not enjoy absolute control. In consequence, the executive is not the only person with an essential role in the decisions actually made. His influence on decisions is largely indirect: it is exerted more on the decision-making process than on the content, and is more concerned with identifying the problems to be addressed than the solutions to be adopted.