Meaningful and effective consultation and the construction industry of Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Ayers, Gerard , Culvenor, John , Sillitoe, Jim , Else, Dennis
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Construction Management and Economics Vol. 31, no. 6 (2013), p. 542-567
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Consultation between employers and employees is mandated under Australian occupational health and safety legislation. For consultation to be considered meaningful and effective, it is generally accepted that moral and ethical principles such as trust, honesty, commitment and respect need to be recognized and applied by individuals during consultation. It is also considered that an organization's level of cultural maturity is an important element in the ability of individuals to freely engage in meaningful and effective consultation. If the value of consultation is best reflected in the degree of input and control that workers have regarding the very decisions that affect them, and if the level of worker involvement is a reflection of an organization's level of cultural maturity, it is debateable whether the notion of applying moral and ethical principles during consultation, and the adoption of the paradigm of organizational and cultural maturity, have been successfully developed and embraced in the commercial and industrial sector of the construction industry of Victoria, Australia. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
- Description: C1
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
- Reviewed:
- 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