Compliance and Initiative in the Production of Safety

This introductory chapter combines several dimensions which are meant to help frame a complex topic representing a very rich diversity of situations across industries, countries, and epochs. The idea is to sensitize readers to several aspects associated with the topic of rules and autonomy in the domain of safety, and of this book. Its aim is to emphasize the importance of contexts when it comes to (safety) rules. Contexts refer to organizations, to industries, to risks, to histories, to practices, to situations, and to countries. Three sections develop the importance of context: (1) The advent of safety rules as an established narrative, (2) There is more than rules in safety, and (3) Historical trends … a bureaucratization of safety? The last section presents the chapters of this book, grouped in three categories, (1) Finding or losing the balance; (2) The role, position, and influence of middle-managers and top management, finally; (3) When autonomy, initiative, and resilience take the lead.

There is increasing awareness that uncertainty cannot be “managed away” to ensure safety. However, how uncertainties can be handled more effectively is still a debated question. In this chapter, I offer a new approach to uncertainty regulation in organizations, which includes opening and closing behaviors aimed at reducing and increasing uncertainty respectively in an attempt to align stability and flexibility requirements for effective and safe performance. I then apply this approach to decisions on rules and operating standards as one of the most fundamental tasks of risk and safety management. By proposing the use of flexible rules and participatory processes for writing, implementing, and monitoring rules, I aim to answer two fundamental questions that have plagued effective rule management: How can rules successfully guide behavior even if substantial amounts of uncertainty about the right course of action in any given situation remain? How can rules instigate autonomous motivation for rule compliance? I close by suggesting steps that organizations can take to explore and implement the proposed new approach to uncertainty.

In this chapter, we argue that the management of values like safety and quality often leads to the creation of unnecessary tasks that interfere with the actual work being done. These tasks, referred to as “bullshit tasks”, are experienced as meaningless and time-consuming. We draw on two decades of empirical research in safety management and work practices in various industries and organizations. We highlight examples where regulations and management systems result in paperwork overload and hinder the efficiency of workers. We discuss how the sociotechnical system, including government regulations, management practices, and worker perspectives, contributes to the proliferation of bullshit tasks. We emphasize the need for a fundamental change in how regulations are made, enforced, and audited to address this issue, and suggest that organizations and managers can take steps to reduce bullshit tasks and improve the overall efficiency of work processes.

The criminological study of corporate crime provides a source of insights into the key role of middle-managers in navigating the tensions between compliance-based and initiative-based approaches to safety. From an initial focus on individual and organizational motivations, the discipline has moved to highlight instead the influence of breakdowns in the connections between individual and organization. Three such grounds of disconnection (problems of ambiguity, structural uncoupling, and autonomy deficits) will be explored, and their implications for understandings of middle-managers’ role will be analyzed.

The implicit theories that top managers hold about organizational reliability potentially exert strong effects on how frontline employees approach the task of managing reliability and, hence, on reliability-linked outcomes. Specifically, such implicit theories (“orientation” for short) can be thought of as varying along a continuum ranging from modular at one end to systemic at the other. A more modular orientation leads to a stronger organizational emphasis on strict compliance, whereas a more systemic orientation emphasizes local initiative by enabling employees to go “above and beyond” formal rules when appropriate. I describe the two ends of the continuum and their implications for organizational reliability. I then point out recent trends that warrant a shift toward a systemic orientation across industries and discuss some initial implications for research and practice.

Safety organizations need to manage their working conditions continuously and effectively while dealing with constant surprises [1]. This chapter calls attention to an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, which I term interlocking surprises. While not completely new, this phenomenon is not fully understood and carries significant implications for research and practice. In conceptualizing interlocking surprises—their nature, implications, and potential responses—my aim is rather simple. It is, to paraphrase social theorist Norbert Elias, to take some steps toward developing the conceptual models and overall vision by which we—academics and practitioners—can make comprehensible in thought what we experience in our everyday realities [2].

The Command–Adapt Paradox arises from the long-standing tension between two perspectives. The central theme of the centralized control perspective is “plan and conform”. The central theme of the guided adaptability perspective is “plan and revise”—being poised to adapt. In the former perspective, operations are pressured to follow rules, procedures and automation with the expectation that success will follow as long as the sharp end personnel work-to-rule, work-to-role, and work-to-plan. The latter perspective recognizes that disrupting events will challenge plans-in-progress, requiring adaptations, reprioritization, and reconfiguration in order to meet key goals given the effects of disturbances and changes. The two perspectives appear to conflict; therefore, organizations must choose one or the other in safety management. Empirical studies, experience, and science all reveal that the paradox is only apparent: “good” systems embedded in the complexities of this universe need to plan and revise—to do both. The paradox dissolves, in part, when one realizes guided adaptability is a capability that builds on plans. The difficulty arises when organizations over-rely on plans. Over-reliance undermines adaptive capacity when beyond-plan challenges arise. Beyond-plan challenges occur regularly for complex systems. The catch is: pressure to comply focuses only on the first and degrades the second. The result is systems with excess brittleness that is evident in the recurring stream of economic and safety failures of complex systems embedded in turbulent worlds.