Defining the principles and practices of safety management in complex systems

The way safety is managed in an organisation depends heavily on the beliefs and assumptions managers have concerning organisational behaviour and safety. The classical safety management paradigm typically views organisations as machine-like entities and emphasises procedural adherence, strict quality control, clear distribution of liabilities, and supervision of workers as the means to manage safety. Accidents and incidents are typically seen as caused by harmful variance in human activity, i.e., human or organisational errors. In modern complex organisations, such centralised control strategies are not enough to manage safety. Contrary to the traditional view, safety can be seen not only as the absence of something negative, but also as the presence of something positive.