Understanding safety management system applicability in community sport
- Authors: Donaldson, Alex , Borys, David , Finch, Caroline
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol. 60, no. (2013), p. 95-104
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/565907
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- Description: Despite recent interest in understanding the implementation context for sports injury prevention interventions, little research attention has been paid to the management structures and processes of community sporting organisations. This study developed expert consensus about the importance of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) setting-related safety management system (SMS) principles and performance indicators in the context of Australian community sporting organizations, and the feasibility of these organisations meeting the requirements for the SMS performance indicators. Twenty-nine sports injury prevention, community sports administration and OHS SMS experts participated in a three-round online Delphi study by rating the importance of 64 SMS performance indicators categorised under the five principles of Commitment and Policy; Planning; Implementation; Measurement and Evaluation; and Review and Improvement. Overall, consensus agreement - define as rated 'essential' or 'very important' on a five-point scale by ≥75% of the participants in Round 3 - was reached for 57 performance indicators. Ten (15%) performance indicators were rated as 'very difficult' or 'relatively difficult', and six (9%) were rated as 'very easy' or 'relatively easy' on a four-point scale, by ≥75% of participants. This research suggests that the guiding principles and associated performance indicators that underpin OHS safety management systems in the workplace are very relevant and applicable to community sporting organisations in Australia. However, considerable work is required to build organisational capacity to be able to develop and implement meaningfully and useful SMSs to prevent sports injuries in the most common setting in which they occur. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. Funded by NHMRC.
- Description: 2003011206
A critical evaluation of the Australian accident classification standard
- Authors: Viner, D. , Harvey, Jack , Borys, David
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety in Australia Vol. 25, no. 2 (2003), p. 27-39
- Full Text: false
- Description: The researchers undertook a study involving post-graduate occupational health and safety students at the University of Ballarat designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Australian standard for classifying accidents. The results showed that the classification scheme has significant limitations which may impact upon the setting of prevention priorities at the national, state, industry and organisational levels of the system for risk control.
- Description: C3
- Description: 2003002690
Exploring risk-awareness as a cultural approach to safety : An ethnographic study of a contract maintenance environment
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: Safety culture has risen to prominence over the past two decades as a means by which organisations may enhance their safety performance. Safety culture may be conceptualised as an interpretive device that mediates between organisational safety rhetoric and safety programs on the one hand, and local workplace cultures on the other. More recently, risk-awareness has emerged as a cultural approach to safety. Front line workers are encouraged to become risk-aware through programs designed to prompt them to undertake mental or informal risk assessments before commencing work. The problem is that risk-awareness programs have not been the subject of systematic research and the impact of these programs on the culture of safety and the resultant level of risk is unknown. Therefore, this ethnographic study of two sites within a large contract maintenance organisation in Australia explored what impact risk-awareness programs have upon the culture of safety and the resultant level of risk. The researcher spent two months in the field and data was collected through participant observation, semistructured interviews and through a review of organisational documents. This study found that managers focused upon collecting the paperwork associated with the program as proof that workers had a safer workplace, whereas workers preferred to rely upon their common sense rather than the paperwork to keep them safe. As a consequence, the riskawareness program resulted in a culture of paperwork and varying levels of risk reduction because the paperwork associated with the program created an illusion of safety for managers as much as common sense did for workers. The results of this study have implications for safety culture, risk-awareness programs and for organisational learning. They also have implications for organisations wishing to improve their safety culture by encouraging risk-awareness in front-line workers.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Working to rule, or working safely? Part 1 : A state of the art review
- Authors: Hale, Andrew , Borys, David
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol.55, no. June (2013), p.207-221
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- Description: The paper reviews the literature from 1986 on the management of those safety rules and procedures which relate to the workplace level in organisations. It contrasts two different paradigms of how rules and their development and use are perceived and managed. The first is a top-down classical, rational approach in which rules are seen as static, comprehensive limits of freedom of choice, imposed on operators at the sharp end and violations are seen as negative behaviour to be suppressed. The second is a bottom-up constructivist view of rules as dynamic, local, situated constructions of operators as experts, where competence is seen to a great extent as the ability to adapt rules to the diversity of reality. The paper explores the research underlying and illustrating these two paradigms, drawn from psychology, sociology and ethnography, organisational studies and behavioural economics. In a separate paper following on from this review (Hale and Borys, this issue http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753512001312#b0285) the authors propose a framework of rule management which attempts to draw the lessons from both paradigms. It places the monitoring and adaptation of rules central to its management process. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Reliability of risk assessments - A statistical evaluation of results from six risk assessment tools
- Authors: Harvey, Jack , Viner, D. , Borys, David
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety in Australia Vol. 24, no. 3 (2002), p. 22-25
- Full Text: false
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003003368
Working to rule or working safely? Part 2 : The management of safety rules and procedures
- Authors: Hale, Andrew , Borys, David
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol.55, no. (2012), p.54-59
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- Description: Part 1, the companion paper to this paper () reviews the literature from 1986 on the management of those safety rules and procedures which relate to the workplace level in organisations. It contrasts two different paradigms of how work rules and their development and use are perceived and managed. The first is a top-down classical, rational approach in which rules are seen as static, comprehensive limits of freedom of choice, imposed on operators at the sharp end and violations are seen as negative behaviour to be suppressed. The second is a bottom-up constructivist view of rules as dynamic, local, situated constructions of operators as experts, where competence is seen to a great extent as the ability to adapt rules to the diversity of reality. That paper explores the research underlying and illustrating these two paradigms. In this second paper we draw on that literature study to propose a framework of rule management which attempts to draw the lessons from both paradigms. It places the monitoring and adaptation of rules central to its management process and emphasises the need for participation of the intended rule followers in the processes of rule-making, but more importantly in keeping those rules alive and up to date in a process of regular and explicit dialogue with first-line supervision, and through them with the technical, safety and legal experts on the system functioning. The framework is proposed for testing in the field as a benchmark for good practice. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Seeing the wood from the trees
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 2000
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems: Proceedings of the First National Conference., Sydney : p. 151-172
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- Description: E1
- Description: 2003002688
The effectiveness of team-based approaches to improving health and safety : case studies from Australian industry in the 1990's
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 1997
- Type: Text , Thesis , Masters
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- Description: "Using case studies from Australian industry, the aim of this research project is to study team members' and their customers perceptions of the effectiveness of team approaches to inmproving health and safety, and to identify the organisational and team factors that may enhance effectiveness."
- Description: Master of Applied Science
Learning to improve safety : The role of communities of practice and collective mindfulness
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Safety in Action Conference, Melbourne : 21st March, 2005
- Full Text: false
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003002693
The role of safe work method statements in the Australian construction industry
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol.50, no.2 (2012), p.210-220
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- Description: The aim of this study was to determine how managers and workers interpret and use safe work method statements (SWMS) in the Australian construction industry in order to explore if there was a gap between work as imagined and work as performed. Despite recent improvements in its safety performance, the Australian construction industry continues to be among the top four most dangerous industries within which to work. SWMS are a key strategy relied upon by the construction industry to reduce this toll. However, few, if any studies have looked at the role of SWMS in creating a safe workplace. This ethnographic study focused on the role of SWMS at two commercial construction sites in Australia. The researcher spent 6 months 'getting to know' the organisation before conducting 18 semi-structured interviews spanning labourers, supervisors and managers. The researcher also collected examples of completed SWMS. This study found: (1) that SWMS are important for safety, particularly for tasks that are out of the ordinary; (2) that social interaction as well as SWMS are important for safety; (3) gaps do exist between work as imagined in a SWMS and work as performed in practice, but in the minds of those on site, there were no unresolved gaps; (4) therefore construction companies must identify and resolve the gaps between SWMS, practice and task demands to make construction sites a safer place to work. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The fifth age of safety : The adaptive age
- Authors: Borys, David , Else, Dennis , Leggett, Susan
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Health and Safety Research and Practice Vol. 1, no. 1 (2009), p. 19-27
- Full Text: false
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- Description: It has been argued that OHS has developed and evolved through a technical age, a human factors age and a management systems age or through a technical wave, a systems wave and a culture wave. A fourth age of safety has been described as the integration age. As the limitations of OHS management systems and safety rules that attempt to control behaviour are becoming evident, it is proposed that we are moving into a fifth age of safety, the ‘adaptive age'; an age which transcends rather than replaces the other ages of safety. The adaptive age embraces adaptive cultures and resilience engineering and requires a change in perspective from human variability as a liability and in need of control, to human variability as an asset and important for safety. Embracing variability as an asset challenges the comfort of management. However, the gap between work as imagined and work as performed and the failure of OHS management systems and safety rules to adequately control risk mean that a new perspective is required.
- Description: 2003007376
Safety regulation: The lessons of workplace safety rule management for managing the regulatory burden
- Authors: Hale, Andrew , Borys, David , Adams, Mark
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol. , no. (2013), p.
- Full Text: false
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- Description: There is a strong political consensus in a number of countries that occupational safety and health regulation is stifling industrial innovation and development and is feeding a culture of damaging risk aversion and petty bureaucracy. In a number of countries this has led to proposals to repeal regulations and reduce the regulatory burden. The authors were commissioned to prepare a discussion paper on this issue by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, aimed particularly at an American audience. This paper is based on that report (Hale et al., 2011). The paper is based on previous work of the first two authors, developing a framework of occupational safety rule management at the workplace level (Hale and Borys, 2012a,b). Based on a literature study, this paper analyses the similarities and differences between rules at the workplace level and the development, use and enforcement of regulations at the national level to influence and control organisational behavior. It traces the forces encouraging the growth of regulatory detail and hence the bureaucratic burden of compliance and the options open to reduce that burden without loosening control so much that the level of safety declines. The analysis uses the hierarchy of rules from goals, through process (risk management) rules to detailed action rules as framework for predicting the level of ownership and responsibility felt by the regulated.
- Description: C1
Profile of an OHS professional in Australia in 2005
- Authors: Borys, David , Else, Dennis , Pryor, Pam , Sawyer, Neroli
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Occupational Health and Safety - Australia and New Zealand Vol. 22, no. 2 (2006), p. 175-192
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This article presents the results of an Australian survey into what OHS professionals do in practice. The survey forms part of a broader international survey that is being conducted across Europe by the European Network of Safety and Health Professional Organisations and will eventually allow for international comparisons to be made. The survey provides insight into the role that OHS professionals play in Australia and the types of hazards that they are involved in managing. The results have implications for OHS education in Australia and will contribute to an evaluation of Australia's capacity to meet the objectives of the national OHS improvement strategy.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001973
Exploring risk-awareness as a cultural approach to safety : Exposing the gap between work as imagined and work as actually preformed
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Monitor Vol. 13, no. 2 (2009), p. 1-11
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- Description: Safety culture has risen to prominence over the past two decades as a means by which organisations may enhance their safety performance. One way to conceptualise safety culture is as an interpretive device that mediates between organisational rhetoric and safety programs on the one hand, and how local workplace cultures make sense of and choose to interpret the rhetoric and programs on the other. More recently, risk-awareness programs have emerged as an approach to changing safety culture. Front line workers are encouraged to become risk-aware through programs designed to prompt them to undertake mental or informal risk assessments before commencing work. The problem is that risk-awareness programs have not been the subject of systematic research. Therefore, the purpose of this ethnographic study of two sites within a large contract maintenance organisation in Australia was to explore the impact of a risk-awareness program upon workers’ awareness of risks, their risk control practices, managers’ practices in relation to the program and the impact of the program on safety culture more generally. This study found that managers focused upon collecting the paperwork associated with the program whereas workers preferred to rely upon their common sense to keep them safe. For workers, the completion of the paperwork became a ritual that served to appease the organisational rhetoric about safety but had minimal influence upon their awareness of risk and their risk control practices. Consequently, the paperwork created an illusion of safety for managers as much as common sense did for workers. Therefore, this study found a gap between work as it was imagined by the managers and work as it was actually performed by the workers. The results of this study have implications for the design of risk-awareness programs and the role of risk-awareness programs in creating a culture of safety.
- Description: 2003007398
Safety culture and resilience engineering exploring theory and application in improving gold mining safety
- Authors: Pillay, Manikam , Borys, David , Else, Dennis , Tuck, Michael
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Gravity gold 2010 'Optimising recovery' p. 129-140
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- Description: Contemporary approaches to safety management appear to be failing short of meeting its mark in improving mine safety. This is evidenced by the high workers compensation, high incidence rates and fatalties. Evidence from high-risk and complex organisations points towards safety culture as being important in improving site safety. In more recent years resilience engineering has been touted as a new and innovative way of managing safety. This paper reviews and synthesises previous literature on safety culture and resilience engineering. It then highlights methods that can be used to measure safety culture and resilience engineering, and explores similarities and differences between complex organisation and gold mining to identify opportunities for more innovative approaches to improving safety in gold mining operations through safety culture and reslience engineering.
Working to rule, or working safely
- Authors: Hale, Andrew , Borys, David
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Trapping Safety into Rules: How Desirable or Avoidable is Proceduralization? Chapter 3 p. 43-68
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This chapter focuses on the use of rules and procedures for those working in the primary processes of hazardous technologies, the machine operators, fitters, pilots, surgeons, nurses and anaesthetists. It explores the support for the dichotomy in the literature on safety rules and their management, and assess whether one can draw the positive aspects from both models and define generic best practice on the management of safety rules and procedures. Safety rules and procedures are presented in many publications on safety management as one of the cornerstones of the risk control system, the translation into specific detail of the top management commitment set out in the safety policy. Amalberti, in a paper discussing technologies that are already ultra-safe, warns of the danger of increasing regulations and procedures in them. More rules simply mean more violations and a suppression of creativity to be able to operate outside the boundary of the envelope defined by safety procedures. © 2013 by Corinne Bieder and Mathilde Bourrier CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor and Francis Group, an Informa business.