MAKING SENSE OF SAFETY: A COMPLEXITY-BASED APPROACH TO SAFETY INTERVENTIONS

The paper describes a case study carried out in an electric utility organization to address safety issues. The organization experiences a less than satisfactory safety performance record despite nurturing a culture oriented to incident prevention. The theoretical basis of the intervention lies in naturalistic sense-making and draws primarily on insights from the cognitive sciences and the science of complex adaptive systems. Data collection was carried out through stories as told by the field workers. Stories are a preferred method compared to conventional questionnaires or surveys because they allow a richer description of complex issues and eliminate the interviewer‟s bias hidden behind explicit questions. The analysis identified several issues that were then classified into different domains (Simple, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic) as defined by a Sense-Making framework approach. The approach enables Management to rationalize its return on investments in safety. In particular, the intervention helps to explain why some implemented safety solutions emanating from a near-miss or an accident investigation can produce a counterproductive impact. Lastly, the paper suggests how issues must be resolved differently according to the domain they belong to.