Procedures coming every day: Safety Management Systems and safety communication in high-risk industries

In high-risk organizations much effort has been made to standardize procedures in order to streamline human action, to decrease risk and increase productivity. The purpose of using IT-based Safety Management System is to code and share best practices, create corporate knowledge directories and to create knowledge networks for organizations. In the risk and safety literature, these management systems are given various names and definitions. The aim for this paper is to give a review of relevant safety literature and come to a unifying definition of what an IT-based Safety Management System is, describe the purpose of such systems and challenges with using Safety Management Systems. In the various definitions used in the research literature, we find certain common features: computer based superstructures, or umbrellas, containing procedures, descriptions and checklists on how different tasks should be performed, and what kind of safety standards different tasks require. Usually these procedures are disseminated throughout the organization via an internal computer network, an intranet, where (hopefully) all employees can access the necessary documents. A central argument in this paper is that the concept of interpretation has been neglected in the safety literature, and that Safety Management Systems should be analysed as a part of an organisations communication. The Safety Management System is constructed at an executive level in the organization and distributed to the lower levels, and at the lower levels, it must be interpreted by the users. There is no guarantee that it will be interpreted as intended. In the development and implementation phases Safety Management Systems in professional organizations the emphasis has often been mainly on the technical requirements, but more attention should be given to the social and cultural facets of knowledge management