How organisations learn from safety incidents: a multifaceted problem

Purpose – This paper seeks to review current approaches to learning from health and safety incidents in the workplace. The aim of the paper is to identify the diversity of approaches and analyse them in terms of learning aspects.Design/methodology/approach – A literature review was conducted searching for terms incident/accident/near misses/disaster/crisis modified with learning/training and safety. Shortlisted articles were analysed by questioning who is learning, what kind of learning process is undertaken, what type of knowledge is employed and the type of problem that these incidents addressed. Current approaches to learning from incidents were critically analysed and gaps identified.Findings – Very few papers addressed all the envisaged aspects when developing their learning from incidents approaches. With support from literature, it was concluded that all the four perspectives, namely participants of learning (participation and inclusion), learning process (single loop, double learning), type of inc...

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