Networks and roles of Pro-Vice Chancellors: a study of the connectedness of PVCs in the 1994 group of universities

Faced with a turbulent higher education environment senior management teams in universities seek to secure the future of their university by accessing as much information about the environment as possible, often through networks. Pro-Vice Chancellors (PVCs) are members of these teams, normally with significant responsibility for activities that are integral to the university, but very little is known about their role and the importance that connections to others might play in it. Taking a social network perspective, this thesis investigates this gap using a two stage research design. First an electronically distributed questionnaire was used to determine the connectivity between PVCs either with responsibility for research or with responsibility for teaching from the original 16 UK universities of the 1994 Group. Secondly, semistructured interviews were conducted with eight PVCs from four of these universities, to examine similarities and differences in the roles of different PVCs and the importance of connectivity for them. Network maps showed that research PVCs were cohesively linked; most were connected to at least two others, and often to many more. Conversely, PVCs with responsibility for teaching were almost wholly unconnected. Connections to other PVCs served three purposes. Occasionally they were important for personal development, otherwise they either enabled PVCs to perform her/his duties by providing information, or enhanced the performance of the university by allowing access to additional resources. It is concluded that PVCs play a boundary spanning role both internally and externally to the University. Moreover, enduring connections to other PVCs formed where opportunities existed to pursue additional resources collaboratively or when it was necessary to lobby government to protect the existing resource base from others. It was argued that these circumstances commonly occurred in the research environment but not in the teaching environment and so the observed pattern of connectivity amongst PVCs was explained.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Pragmatic science? Reflections on the academic - industry interactions in a European aviation research programme

In this article we explore the types of science produced and disseminated in human factors research in the cognitive domain. We reflect on the methods and techniques used in the European, Horizon 2020 Future Sky Safety Project: Human Performance Envelope (P6). This project has spanned multiple research paradigms successfully, and engaged academia and research organizations throughout. We discuss the challenges of conducting practically focused work that can also be brought to publication in peer-reviewed journals. Finally, we frame our research contributions within this project using a model of practitioner engagement

Safety leadership practices for organizational safety compliance: developing a research agenda from a review of the literature

Safety leadership is asserted to positively influence safety compliance amongst employees. We examine this assertion by conducting a systematic literature review of the available academic literature on safety leadership practices and observed safety outcomes. We identified 25 empirical studies, the majority of which measured leadership through generic scales (MLQ and LMX). Closer scrutiny of the outcome measures suggested that these were mainly aligned to the implementation and operations phases of the OHSAS 18001 safety management systems framework. We conclude that safety compliance has been narrowly defined in academic study, but in practice embraces a much wider range of activities. While safety leadership may contribute to successfully achieving these other actions, there is no empirical evidence for this. Moreover, there is considerable critique of transformational and transactional leadership, so that the specification of desired leadership practices is problematic. We propose that a broader conceptualization of safety compliance requires safety leadership to embrace ‘plural’ forms of leadership. We draw attention to the narrow range of contexts in which safety leadership has been empirically studied and suggest other settings for investigation. Alternative methods for investigating safety leadership other than scales of leadership behaviour are suggested to enrich our understanding of safety leadership and so improve safety compliance

Effective transfer of safety interventions within and between organizations: Leveraging translation theory to achieve improved outcomes

Safety interventions are often ‘borrowed’ from one organizational setting, where they have worked successfully, to another organizational setting but not necessarily with the same positive outcomes. Translation theory could offer potential insights into the processes through which managers translate safety practices either from one organization to another or from one part to another part of the same organization. To examine this possibility, this study used the framework method of analysis, underpinned by a conceptual framework developed from translation theory, to analyse qualitative data from interviews with experienced managers having responsibility for safety in their organization who shared narratives of eight different safety interventions deployed in a variety of industry sectors ranging from oil and gas to retail from around the world. By inference from the data, analysis shows that interventions of low complexity, low embeddedness and high explicitness which theory characterises as more translatable, were also in practice more successfully translated. Furthermore, interventions with senior management support had higher levels of interpretive viability, thus making them more transformable and ensuring translation success. Also, translations were more successful when the safety interventions received adequate resourcing, were targeted at a narrow rather than a broad organizational scope and where they were integrated into existing work practices. The conceptual elements of the framework adopted in this study have the potential to support the development of translation competence among safety professionals, thus permitting the future deployment of more effective safety interventions in the workplace to reduce accidents and injuries

Safety training in context: technical, cultural and political factors affecting its design, delivery and transfer

Introduction: Safety training is integral to modern safety management systems. However, what is trained in the classroom is not always adopted and applied in the workplace, creating the training transfer problem. Taking an alternative ontological stance, the aims of this study were to conceptualize this problem as one of ‘fit’ between what is trained and the contextual factors in the work environment of the adopting organization. Method: Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with experienced health and safety trainers having diverse backgrounds and experience. Data were thematically coded ‘bottom-up’ to capture reasons for safety training and where consideration of context occurs in the design and delivery of training. Then, the codes were thematically grouped against a pre-existing framework to categorize contextual factors that affect ‘fit’ into technical, cultural, and political factors each operating at different levels of analysis. Results: Safety training occurs to satisfy external stakeholder expectations and meet internal perceptions of need. Consideration of contextual factors can occur both in the design and delivery of training. A range of technical, cultural, and political factors were identified, which can operate at individual, organizational, or supra-organizational levels to influence safety training transfer. Conclusions: The study draws particular attention to the influence of political factors and the impact of supra-organizational factors on the successful transfer of training, areas not consistently considered in safety training design and delivery. Practical Application: The application of the framework adopted in this study provides a useful tool for discriminating between different contextual factors and the level at which they operate. This could enable more effective management of these factors to improve the potential for transfer of safety training from the classroom to the workplace

Safety risk factors in two different types of routine outsourced work: a systematic literature review

Outsourcing generates risks for client firms but these vary according to the contracted task. This systematic literature review reports on 50 empirical studies that investigate the safety risk factors associated with outsourcing aligning them with the three categories of safety risk factors identified by Underhill and Quinlan in their PDR-Model. By using a 2x2 framework based on the strategic value of the task to the client firm (core or peripheral) and its level of complexity (complex or routine) we could combine studies of outsourced relationships between firms with those between firms and individuals. This demonstrated that there is little empirical evidence available for the safety risk factors associated with complex outsourced tasks. It also showed that routine tasks core to the client business contained risk factors associated with both economic and reward pressure and disorganization. Finally, safety risk factors associated with routine peripheral tasks were mainly due to economic and reward pressures in firm-to-individual contracting, but due to disorganization in firm-to-firm contracting

Differences in perception of the importance of process safety indicators between experts in Iran and the West

Introduction: The importance of safety in high-risk industries such as oil and gas facilities has been reported previously. Process safety performance indicators can provide insight into improving the safety of process industries. This paper aims to rank the process safety indicators (metrics) by Fuzzy Best-Worst Method (FBWM) using the data gathered through a survey. Method: The study uses a structured approach considering the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), and the IOGP (International Association of Oil and Gas Producers) recommendations and guidelines to generate an aggregate set of indicators. It calculates the level of importance of each indicator based on the opinions of experts from Iran and some Western countries. Results: The findings of the study demonstrate that some lagging indicators such as the number of times processes do not proceed as planned due to insufficient staff competence and the number of unexpected disruptions of the process due to failure in instrumentation and alarms are important in process industries in both Iran and Western countries. Western experts identified process safety incident severity rate as an important lagging indicator, whereas Iranian experts considered this as relatively unimportant. In addition, leading indicators such as sufficient process safety training and competency, the desired function of instrumentation and alarms, and proper management of fatigue risk play an important role in enhancing the safety performance of process industries. Experts in Iran viewed permit to work as an important leading indicator, while experts in the West focused on fatigue risk management. Practical Applications: The methodology used in the current study gives a good view to managers and safety professionals in regard to the most important indicators of process safety and allows them to focus more on important process safety indicators

Exploring the impact of safety culture on incident reporting: lessons learned from machine learning analysis of NHS England staff survey and incident data

Safety culture is one of the key factors contributing to safety, even though limited evidence supports its impact on safety outcomes. This study uses supervised machine learning algorithms to explore the association between safety culture and incident reporting. The study used National Health Service (NHS) England annual staff survey data as a proxy of safety culture to predict eighteen incident reporting variables. The study did not achieve high accuracy rates in the prediction models. The highest association was found between safety culture and the number of incidents reported in class low, medium and high. LightGBM was the best-performed algorithm. SHAP plots were used to explain the model. Findings suggest that compassionate culture, violence and harassment and work pressure are critical in predicting the number of incidents reported. More specifically, the violence and harassment had a more significant impact on predicting the number of incidents reported in class high than in class medium and low. The involvement had more effect on predicting class low. The results demonstrated different behaviours in predicting different incident reporting classes. The findings facilitate lessons learned from staff surveys and incident reporting data in NHS England. Consequently, the findings can contribute to improving the safety culture in hospitals

Designing safety interventions for specific contexts

Executive Summary Workplace health and safety (H&S) is a significant global issue; around 500 million people are adversely affected by work-related injuries and illnesses each year, while the number of daily workplace fatalities runs into the thousands. One explanation for these alarming statistics may lie in the way safety interventions are introduced and implemented in different contexts. A ‘safety intervention’ could be any physical artefact, process, procedure, skills, or specialist knowledge that restores, maintains, or strengthens safety (i.e., prevents or mitigates safety risks; influences culture and behaviours; improves health and wellbeing; ensures compliance with legal requirements). Misalignment between interventions and context increases the possibility of failure with adverse consequences. Where interventions ‘fit’ the context safety performance is high. There is a clear requirement to minimise harm and maximise worker well-being in the workplace, a change that can be driven by the implementation of context-appropriate safety interventions. However, the degree to which organisations and occupational H&S researchers, and trainers contemplate contextualisation processes, and the variables that influence these processes, when sourcing, designing and implementing safety interventions is unclear and may account for the lack of success observed for some interventions. In this report we attempt to address this knowledge gap and present the findings of our investigation into whether and how researchers, trainers, and organisations consider contextual factors in safety interventions. The study comprised of three broad strands. Firstly, a comprehensive Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) reviewed scholarly work published in peer-reviewed journals between 2011 and 2021; from an initial sample of 3,450 studies, 73 studies were included in the final review. Secondly, a screen of nationally and internationally recognised training materials, coupled with 12 semi-structured interviews with experienced trainers, was performed to determine how frequently safety courses considered context. Finally, further interviews with industry stakeholders were performed to identify both successful and unsuccessful interventions and to ascertain if context was a factor in outcomes. We identified that training and education was the most frequently applied intervention, and training providers confirm that they believe appropriate consideration of context would increase the effectiveness of interventions. However, it was also clear that few courses consider the influence of context on the interventions or describe a framework whereby such contextualisation could occur. For example, interventions are often ‘borrowed’ from other organisations and are not adjusted to meet the specific needs of the new environment. This, coupled with the observation of a widespread failure of organisations to review the impact of their safety training in a continuous fashion and update and improve its implementation, suggests that there is a need for organisational level adjustments. We, therefore, suggest that the following five recommendations are developed to improve the training of workplace H&S, and thus its implementation: 1. Organisations should begin considering the context of interventions as much as the intervention itself during implementation. This process can be assisted via the development of the processes detailed below. 2. Organisations, occupational safety and health (OSH) training providers, OSH institutions and agencies, and academia should develop guidelines that indicate key success factors (KSFs) for safety training effectiveness within the organisational context, and how these 3 KSFs can be achieved. These would consider organisational characteristics, trainee demographics and features of the intervention. 3. Organisations, OSH training providers, OSH institutions and agencies, and academia should develop guidelines for designing online safety training materials that consider context. This should consider aesthetics, usability and usefulness drawing on existing knowledge of technology acceptance. 4. Organisations, OSH training providers, OSH institutions and agencies, and academia should develop guidelines to produce immersive, interactive, digital content for contextually relevant safety training materials to meet growing demand. 5. OSH training providers, OSH institutions and agencies and OSH regulators should promote the need to review the benefits of safety training after the event and to review current understanding before re-training. In addition, the field would benefit from further research to better describe methodologies and frameworks that will allow for efficient contextualisation of H&S interventions across a wide range of industries. These have been specified in a further set of 11 recommendations.Lloyd’s Register Foundatio

Designing safer working interventions through a literature review using a mechanisms-based approach

The explanation for what safety interventions work in any particular circumstance remains elusive, resulting in many work-related fatalities and injuries every year. We propose a shift in perspective from a preoccupation with safety interventions and their effects to an elucidation of the generative mechanisms underpinning safety and its contiguous context. Using an analytical framework based on contexts, interventions, mechanisms and outcomes (CIMO) we were able to review 43 empirical studies of safety interventions deployed by leaders in organizations. This motivated the development of 10 design propositions; 5 related to accident and injury reduction and 5 to changing safety behaviours. Greater understanding of the mechanisms by which interventions exert their effects will lead to the design of more context appropriate safety interventions thereby enhancing individual and organizational safety in the future and the development of evidence-based safety