Safety, Culture and Risk: The Organisational Causes of Disasters

This is one of several books on safety and in this book Professor Hopkins deals with these complex issues so that organisations will be better able to create safe environments for their employees and clients, and to mitigate risk.

Safety management in the workplace is an issue of critical importance to business managers as well as those responsible for safety and training in any organisation.

However, although the concepts of safety, culture and risk have become increasing matters of concern and are often discussed, they are concepts that are not often clearly understood.

This book from Professor Andrew Hopkins focuses on these concepts, and deals with the complex issues in a clear, informative style that will both inform organisations and companies, and assist them to be better able to create safe environments for their employees and clients, and to mitigate risk.

Content: 
The first three parts of the book advocate the development of risk-awareness. 

• Part 1 is a general discussion of organisational culture.

  • Chapter 1: Safety, culture, collective mindfulness and risk-awareness

• Part 2 is an empirical investigation of how organisational culture affects safety, using the Glenbrook train crash as a case study.

  • Chapter 2: Introduction to the Glenbrook case study

  • Chapter 4: A culture of rules

  • Chapter 5: A culture of "silos"

  • Chapter 6: A risk-blind culture

  • Chapter 7: Glenbrook: concluding thoughts

• Part 3 is a second case study of how organisational culture interfered with safety, focusing on the F111 inquiry at Amberley Air Force Base, Queensland.

  • Chapter 8: Introduction to the Royal Australian Air Force case study

  • Chapter 9: Aspects of Air Force culture

  • Chapter 10: Flying safety

  • Chapter 11: The Royal Australian Air Force: concluding thoughts

• Part 4 is an extended discussion of the concept of risk, dealing with issues such as the assumption that risk can be objectively measured; the current view that risk is a product of likelihood and severity; the conflict between "acceptable risk" and "as low as reasonably practical"; the tendency of risk management to become risk spreading rather than risk reduction; and the confusion between risk and hazard.

  • Chapter 12: Quantitative risk assessment and acceptable risk: a critique

  • Chapter 13: Risk society?

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