The blameworthiness of health and safety rule violations

Man-made disasters usually lead to the tightening of safety regulations, because rule breaking is seen as a major cause of them. This reaction is based on the presumptions that the safety rules are good and that the rule-breakers are wrong. The reasons the personnel of a coke factory gave for breaking rules raise doubt about the tenability of these presumptions. It is unlikely that this result would have been achieved on the basis of a disaster evaluation or High-Reliability Theory. In both approaches, knowledge of the consequences of human conduct hinders an unprejudiced judgement about the blameworthiness of rule breaking

The Development of a graduate students' centre

Bibliography: p. 85-86

sj-pdf-1-jmi-10.1177_10564926241232319 - Supplemental material for A Relational Construction of Organizational Risk: Normalizing Versus Problematizing Through Risk Work on Concerns Versus Measures

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-jmi-10.1177_10564926241232319 for A Relational Construction of Organizational Risk: Normalizing Versus Problematizing Through Risk Work on Concerns Versus Measures by Cagri Topal and Robert P Gephart in Journal of Management Inquiry</p

Cultural Rationalities in Crisis Sensemaking: a Study of a Public Inquiry into a Major Industrial Accident

This paper investigates the sensemaking which occurred during a public inquiry into a fatal gas pipeline accident. The research conceives of the public inquiry as an important stage in crises, and investigates the role of multiple perspectives and rationalities in crisis sensemaking. Stakeholders at the inquiry are shown to differ in terms of their social organization, the cultural biases they hold, and the interpretations they make of events and risks. The paper extends the multiple perspectives approach to crises by linking this approach to theoretical developments in cultural analysis, and by showing the implications multiple perspectives have for inquiry and crisis stakeholders