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Books by jean-christophe le coze

This open access book provides an analytical and critical outlook, by leading scholars, of the im... more This open access book provides an analytical and critical outlook, by leading scholars, of the impact of various trends in the quality of collaboration and resulting safety outcomes that arise from the evolution of traditional integrated production within a single firm into a complex web of partnerships and supply chains. In the face of increasing fragmentation within industrial production and the associated rise in the complexity of inter-organizational communication and transaction, this book analyses causal factors such as cost pressures, globalization of demand, increasingly flexible resource allocation and work organization, changes in legal liability and the possibilities afforded by information technology.

Various case studies focus on the effects of crossing boundaries between organizations, between different trades and professions and between countries, assessing the effect of variations in regulatory structures and national cultures. Furthermore, they illustrate the wide range of organizational forms to be found in high-hazard industries today and the impact, potential or real, of the variety of forms of partnership on safety and well-being at work. The contributors assess the effect of out-sourcing and of various forms of partnership and governance on safety at work and how they can be made to support the prevention of major accident hazards.

This book explores an important yet understudied topic in safety. Chapters cover different angle... more This book explores an important yet understudied topic in safety.
Chapters cover different angles which offer a first overview of this subject!

This book covers a number of themes and topics associated with the digital age: • Software design... more This book covers a number of themes and topics associated with the digital age: • Software design • Risk assessment • Data infrastructure • Cybersecurity • Human-Machine (AI) interaction • Data privacy • Blockchains • Smart devices • Algorithmic Management

In this book, I argue that there is a need to revisit Perrow’s seminal contribution, Normal Accid... more In this book, I argue that there is a need to revisit Perrow’s seminal contribution, Normal Accidents. I discuss conceptual and empirical changes in the past three decades and show the relevance of thinking our current situation with the help of this classic book when confronted to these changes; hence, the prefix “post”.

Les accidents industriels majeurs sont rares, mais ils affectent leur environnement naturel et so... more Les accidents industriels majeurs sont rares, mais ils affectent leur environnement naturel et social comme nous l’ont rappelé la catastrophe d’AZF à Toulouse en 2001 et l’incendie de l’usine Lubrizol à Rouen en septembre 2019. De nombreux acteurs, internes et externes à l’entreprise, travaillent à la prévention de ces risques.
Cet ouvrage présente les résultats d’une enquête par immersion au coeur de cinq entreprises de la chimie de spécialité. L’approche du quotidien de ces entreprises à risques est inédite, dans le monde académique, mais aussi dans les autres sphères de la société.
L’ambition des deux auteur.e.s est, par leur approche descriptive et ethnographique, de donner à comprendre la complexité, à la fois sociale et technique, de ces entreprises industrielles.
La prévention des risques industriels majeurs est un sujet difficile qui peut être abordé de diverses manières. Le croisement de la sociologie du travail, de l’emploi et de l’activité avec la sociologie des systèmes à risques permet une lecture originale de cette activité qui résulte de l’interaction entre de nombreux acteurs internes et externes à l’entreprise.
Dans une perspective de sociologie publique, les deux auteurs se sont efforcés de rendre la lecture accessible à tout public.

Safety-critical systems such as offshore platforms, hospitals, aircrafts, nuclear power plants, r... more Safety-critical systems such as offshore platforms, hospitals, aircrafts, nuclear power plants, refineries, bridges, dams, mines etc rely on a myriad of artefacts and actors to operate safely. It is an admirable political, technological, social and economic endeavour re-enacted everyday all over the world. But sometimes, when a bridge collapses, a building burns, an offshore platform explodes, a nuclear reactor melts down, a train derails, a ship sinks or a plane crashes, we are reminded how precarious such successes are and we are also reminded of the diversity of practices across countries, sectors and companies. To study these operations, to understand their complexities, to develop practical solutions, safety science has matured over 40 years. And, because of their immense complexity, high-risk systems have been investigated through the lenses of different research traditions. The 1980s and 1990s were foundational decades in this respect because many of the core programs within safety science have been structured ever since by influential networks of researchers. They have developed ideas, methods and concepts including, among others, safety culture, cognitive engineering, safety regulations, high-reliability organisations or normal accident. These networks of authors created lenses through which we grasp safety-critical systems, their mode of operating but also their ways of failing. If traditions have created, framed and shaped the contours of safety science, they are also historically situated in a different era, the end of the 20 th century. What about their relevance for a world which has tremendously changed at the turn of the 21 st century? The intention of this book is to explore this question, to step back, and to connect these established traditions with insights by a new generation of researchers within, across and beyond these traditions. These writers indeed apply, adapt, extend, challenge, combine or reformulate these traditions when confronted to our increasingly digitalised, globalised and networked world.

Pioneers, authors and legacies in safety by jean-christophe le coze

This article discusses the safety contribution of a public administration scholar specialised in ... more This article discusses the safety contribution of a public administration scholar specialised in space policy, Howard McCurdy. Its aim is twofold. First, it contends that McCurdy's research on NASA and (post) bureaucracy has been overlooked in the field whereas it provides a valuable lens to the understanding of reliability, safety and performance of safety-critical systems. This contention requires bringing to the fore McCurdy' extensive study of NASA and his rationale over several decades. Second, the article argues that McCurdy's research brings novel and valuable insights to important safety debates. Following a methodological section, the article explains his analysis of the engineering, organisational, and political complexities and challenges experienced by NASA's employees over more than sixty years of the agency's lifetime, developing a unique longitudinal and multilevel study of reliability, safety and performance. The relevance of McCurdy's lens is then illustrated using SpaceX as a case study, an example of the new developments in organising space exploration with their safety related challenges, moving from public to private initiatives. In the discussion, the article explores the value of this author for past and contemporary debates on reliability, safety and performance of safety-critical systems. In "Reinterrogating the past", it is argued that McCurdy's research provides a bridge between what was once framed as two opposite theses, normal accident versus high-reliability organisation. In "challenging the present" it is argued that more recent debates and controversies triggered by the "new view" might not be as new as currently thought and advocated.

In 1984, Charles Perrow (CP) released a landmark book entitled Normal Accident (NA), in which he ... more In 1984, Charles Perrow (CP) released a landmark book entitled Normal Accident (NA), in which he defended the argument of the inevitability of accident in certain type of high risk systems. The aim of this paper is, thirty years after the book’s publication, to reconsider this book and offer a new interpretation. Indeed, in hindsight, the message of the book seems today as compelling as ever. Accidents and catastrophes have continued to occur over the last three decades. However, the technological determinism of the book has been criticised and shown to be too restricted to account for the social nature of these phenomena. In opposition to his structuralist view, some authors have argued an extended socio-technological model of the normality of accidents. Indeed, Charles Perrow himself often complained about the misuse of his own technological rational to interpret accidents. Consequently, he has regularly used instead a wider, macro-social, critical and power view of organisations and society to interpret accidents. This second posture was clearly in the background of the 1984 book, but has often been neglected, unnoticed or overlooked by commentators, proponents and critics. This paper aims to highlight this second underlying message of the book. This second message could arguably be today, in retrospect, the book’s most valuable and compelling contribution to our understanding of accidents and safety and a basis for contemporary research.

Over the past two decades, the 'new view' has become a popular term in safety theory and practice... more Over the past two decades, the 'new view' has become a popular term in safety theory and practice. It has however also been criticised, provoking division and controversy. The aim of this article is to clarify the current situation. It describes the origins, ambiguities and successes of the 'new view' as well as the critiques formulated. The article begins by outlining the origins of this concept, in the 1980s and 1990s, from the cognitive (system) engineering (CSE) school initiated by Rasmussen, Hollnagel and Woods. This differed from Reason's approach to human error in this period. The article explains how Dekker, in the early 2000s, translates ideas from the CSE school to coin the term 'new view', while also developing, shortly after, an argument against Reason's legacy that was more radical and critical than his predecessors'. Secondly, the article describes the ambiguities associated with the term 'new view' because of the different programs that have derived from CSE (Resilience Engineering-RE then Safety II, Safety Differently, Theory of Graceful Extensibility). The text then identifies three programs by different thinkers (methodological, formal and critical) and Dekker's three eclectic versions of the 'new view'. Thirdly, the article discusses the success of the CSE and RE school, showing how it has strongly resonated with many practitioners outside the academic world. Fourthly, the objections raised within the field of human factors and system safety but also from different traditions (e.g., system safety engineering with Leveson, sociology of safety with Hopkins) are introduced, and discussed.

This article provides a historical and critical account of James Reason’s contribution to safety ... more This article provides a historical and critical account of James Reason’s contribution to safety research with a focus on the Swiss cheese model (SCM), its developments and its critics. This article shows that the SCM is a product of specific historical circumstances, has been developed over a ten years period following several steps, and has benefited of the direct influence of John Wreathall. Reason took part in intense intellectual debates and publications in the 1980s during which many ideas circulated among researchers, featuring authors as influent as Donald Norman, Jens Rasmussen, Charles Perrow or Barry Turner. The 1980s and 1990s were highly productive from a safety research point of view (e.g. human error, incubation models, high reliability organisation, safety culture) and Reason has considerably influenced it with a rich production of models, based on both research and industrial projects. Historical perspectives offer interesting insights because they can question research, the conditions of its production, its relevance and, sometimes, its success, as for the SCM. But, because of this success, critics have vividly argued about some of the SCM limitations, including its simplistic vision of accidents and its degree of generality. Against these positions, the article develops a ‘critique of the criticism’, and the article concludes that the SCM remains a relevant model because of its systematic foundations and its sustained use in high-risk industries; despite of course, the need to keep imagining alternatives based on the mix of collective empirical, practical and graphical research which was in the SCM background.

In the past two decades, Andrew Hopkins has been a very successful analyst of technological disas... more In the past two decades, Andrew Hopkins has been a very successful analyst of technological disasters and an acclaimed storyteller. In this article, I argue that he is also a theorist, and that he has developed over 40 years a normative sociological model of safety for studying major events. To do so, I first situate his contribution through a historical perspective going back to the 1970s and 1980s, a time during which Hopkins established core elements of a research program on catastrophic events subsequently deployed in late the 1990s onwards. Initially inspired in the 1970s and 1980s by the crime of the powerful, white-collar crime literature and a Marxist socio-legal perspective of society, he developed what I define as a white-collar crime model of accident (WCC-MA). He then moves in the 1990s and 2000s on to a more organisational and practical sociology of safety elaborated in his retrospective accounts of disasters. To ground this assertion, I explain how his storytelling success results from the invention of a specific narrative structure which is based on a repeated sequence of description (1), assumption (2), explanation (3), comparison (4), recommendation (5) and counterfactual reasoning (6), applied to many articulated topics. From there, I extract a (normative) sociological model of safety built over two decades, and then discuss some of the findings of this study.

Applied Ergonomics, 2015

This article is the second part of a study on the legacy of Jens Rasmussen. The first article, su... more This article is the second part of a study on the legacy of Jens Rasmussen. The first article, subtitled 'A Strong Program for a Hard Problem', looks back on his 30 years of scientific contribution, from 1969 to 2000. This second article explores and investigates some of the intellectual roots which influenced his thinking, using them as a basis to understand some limits and move forward. Indeed, historically oriented studies such as this one are not only tributes to researchers, but a way to differentiate and contrast our present situation with the past in order to integrate contemporary trends, be they theoretical or empirical, or oriented towards research and new models. In the first section of this article, I offer a synthesis of the background covered in the previous article, but I use a tree here as a graphical complement. Branches of the tree show the many fruitful directions opened by Jens Rasmussen, directions which inspired many researchers. In the second part, I address what I believe to be behind this wealth of engineering legacy: cybernetics. I contend that cybernetics has had a profound influence on his thinking and provided him key principles for his inspiring and successful models. To develop the tree image, one might say that cybernetics is the trunk of the tree. Finally, in the third part, I take the opportunity to explore the relevance of extending and sensitising his program to constructivist discourses. After an introduction to this discourse, identifying four types of constructivisms (cognitive, social, epistemological and anthropological), I characterise this move as a 'constructivist turn'.

This chapter explores the contribution of Barry Turner to the qualitative mode of inquiry of safe... more This chapter explores the contribution of Barry Turner to the qualitative mode of inquiry of safety-critical systems and suggests that his contribution can be pursued and defined, in the context of daily operations, as conceptual ethnography. Proceeding with a historical analysis of his writings between the 1970s and early 1990s, the chapter shows the interwoven character of his main topics of research: organisational symbolism, disasters and grounded theory. It introduces then addresses the evolution of the method of grounded theory which Turner used, challenged and improved. Turner appears to be a prescient analyst of some of the limitations of grounded theory as fully exposed during the 1990s and 2000s by a new generation of grounded theorists. His critics include the problems of theory-data connection, the practice of ethnography, the presence of macro structure and the exteriority of researcher. After identifying recent qualitative approach of disaster by two sociologists (historical ethnography by Diane Vaughan and desktop ethnography by Andrew Hopkins), the notion of conceptual ethnography is defined.

Ideas, concepts and theories in safety by jean-christophe le coze

I thank Francisco Lima and Francisco Duarte for inviting me to this symposium of the Self (Sociét... more I thank Francisco Lima and Francisco Duarte for inviting me to this symposium of the Self (Société d’Ergonomie de Langue Française – Society of French Language Ergonomics) on the theme of safety culture. In Brazil, as everywhere else, safety is more relevant than ever. The images that circulated around the world of the Samarco (2015) and Bromadinho (2019) events echo catastrophic events in other countries and other industries, such as the crashes of the 737 Max of the American company Boeing (2018-2019); the collapse of Genoa Bridge in Italy (2018) or the Grenfell Tower fire in London (2017).
These events remind us how safety is never acquired and is always the product of numerous interactions between artifacts, actors, organisations, institutions and ecosystems in a globalised context which requires a renewal of our safety thinking frameworks (Le Coze, 2019a, 2020). It is diﬃcult, in a few pages to present this subject. I therefore propose firstly to situate the programmatic framework of the research carried out at Ineris to indicate how ergonomics fits into this framework and then to help shed light the notion of safety culture based on a recently published study, and finally, to conclude with the new perspectives of ‘multilevel’ reading and the contribution of ergonomics to these perspectives.

This article wishes to contribute to current research on resilience by considering three aspects ... more This article wishes to contribute to current research on resilience by considering three aspects of this topic. The first describes the popularity of resilience as a product of a shift of era which creates a degree of uncertainties about the future in several domains of concern in a globalised context: ecology, terrorism, economy, technology. It is argued that in a state of poly-crisis leading to potential mega-crisis, resilience comes as a very powerful idea to harness surprises and high-stress situations. The second aspect is more restricted to industrial safety research and argues that resilience has to be considered in relation to already established notion such as safety, reliability but also robustness. These overlapping notions have been developed by different research traditions for understanding safety but with different descriptive scope: cognition, organisation and regulation. Once the principle that safety, reliability, resilience or robustness are very much compatible is acknowledged, the last part addresses the cognitive, institutional, methodological, empirical and theoretical challenges of interdisciplinary multilevel safety research. Several decades of research have shown the multidimensional nature of safety, theorised in particular by Rasmussen's "strong program for a hard problem" during the 1990s, before the advent of the notion of resilience. Illustrations and discussions in this last section are based on the basis of empirical case studies in the context of daily operations of chemical plants.

This paper argues that current safety assessment methodologies and models must be revised to refl... more This paper argues that current safety assessment methodologies and models must be revised to reflect what is now known about the complexity of technological disasters. It first introduces the normal accident's debate and indicates three types of issues that maintain the quarrel unsettled: the retrospective fallacy, the unanticipated consequences of technological and social actions and the difficulty to establish normative frames. Second, it argues, despite the 'normal accident' theory background, that there is much room for improvement in the way safety is assessed, if one considers closely, for instance, the lessons from socio-technological disasters. The Macondo well case study in 2010 (Chief Counsel Report, 2011) illustrates the complexity of the problem and the multidimensional nature of disasters. As safety assessments rely for a good part on safety management system audits (although the situation differs according to the high-risk industries concerned), it is found relevant to start questioning their limits. This is what is explored in a third section, based on literature, empirical studies, and theory. The conclusion is that the audit rationale is not adapted to address the complexity of high-risk socio technical system and what we know from major accidents investigations.

The aim of this paper is to discuss in-depth (micro-meso-macro) accident investigations and to pr... more The aim of this paper is to discuss in-depth (micro-meso-macro) accident investigations and to provide a way of organising various orientations. Several methods and models exist today for investigating accidents and many classifications are available. This paper articulates a scheme for classification based on three main orientations: the development of disaster theories by researchers (1), investigative commissions set up following a disaster (2) and root cause analysis (RCA) (3). The rationales behind these orientations are introduced and discussed. They are classified according to their position in reference to what is their normative (what should be) or descriptive (what is) perspective, also using an idea developed in grounded theory of ''model that should fit the data" instead of "data that should fit the model". They are situated in a framework, along with other approaches. The paper discusses the limitations and advantages of each orientation, with different people in mind (safety managers, inspectors of hazardous installations, professional investigators, researchers). A discussion emphasises the need to remain sensitive to who learns what, considering the diversity of the orientations identified.

Applied Ergonomics, 2015

Quelque chose ne va pas dans le métier de la sécurité. De nombreux ouvrages écrits par des préven... more Quelque chose ne va pas dans le métier de la sécurité. De nombreux ouvrages écrits par des préventeurs depuis le milieu des années 2010 expriment un fort mécontentement, formulé dans des arguments similaires. Ces professionnels de la sécurité sont très critiques quant à leur situation, leur pratique, leur rôle et leur identité, et parfois même les perspectives du métier. Dans ces livres, ils expriment ce que cet article décrit comme le « blues des professionnels de la sécurité ». Bien que variés dans le style d’écriture, le ton, les inspirations théoriques, l’orientation et leur expérience, ils abordent des problématiques similaires qui relèvent des pratiques correspondant, à leurs yeux, à des principes dépassées, inadaptés, voire pervers. Il s’agit notamment, sans s’y réduire, de la sécurité basée sur les approches comportementalistes (BBS), la pyramide de Heinrich ou la notion de « sécurité comme priorité ». Au lieu de cela, ils proposent des idées différentes conduisant à des pratiques potentiellement différentes, les illustrant parfois de manière concrète.
Le but de cet article est d’introduire, de résumer, d’expliquer et de problématiser l’importance de cette littérature. Après un volet méthodologique, le « blues du professionnel de la sécurité » est introduit. Il est avancé dans une autre section que le « blues » identifie ce que ces auteurs considèrent comme des principes dépassés mais persistant dans la profession de sécurité, notamment sur la causalité, la sécurité (par rapport au risque), les individus au travail, la bureaucratie, l'organisation, la conformité (la loi, la certification) et les indicateurs de sécurité. Les racines de ce mécontentement font l'objet d'une autre section, tandis qu'une dernière section problématise le « blues ». Il est expliqué comment ces livres sont les productions créatives de professionnels exposant une tension et comblant une lacune à l'intersection de plusieurs dynamiques parmi lesquelles l'évolution des pratiques des préventeurs, les formations à la sécurité et la production de recherches sur la sécurité.

Something is not right in the safety profession. Many books written by professionals in the 2010s... more Something is not right in the safety profession. Many books written by professionals in the 2010s express a strong discontent, formulated in similar arguments. These professionals are highly critical of their situation, practice, role and identity, and sometimes prospects. In these books, they express what this article describes as the "blues of safety professionals". Although varying in writing style, tone, theoretical inspiration, emphasis, and experience, they address similar issues which relate to practices corresponding, in their eyes, to outmoded, inadequate, or even perverse ideas. These include, but are not limited to, behaviour-based safety (BBS), Heinrich's pyramid, or the notion of 'safety as priority'. Instead, they promote different ideas leading to potentially different practices, illustrating them sometimes concretely. The aim of this article is to introduce, summarise, explain, and problematise the significance of this literature. Following a methodological section, the 'safety professional blues' is introduced. It is argued in another section that the 'blues' pinpoints what these authors consider to be flawed assumptions about many of the core ingredients of the safety profession including causality, safety (vs risk), people at work, bureaucracy, organisation, compliance (law, certification) and safety metrics. The roots of this discontent are the topic of another section, while a final section problematises the 'blues'. It is explained how these books are the creative outcomes of professionals exposing a tension and filling a gap at the intersection of several dynamics among which the evolution of the practices of safety professionals, education in safety, and the production of safety science research, and beyond the field.

Global risks are both recent and very old realities. They range from financial crises to the thre... more Global risks are both recent and very old realities. They range from financial crises to the threat of an asteroid impact through pandemics or climate change (e.g. global warming). The aim of this chapter is to offer a way of ordering this diversity of topics related to global risks into a coherent view based on an analysis of the emergence of this new category in the past three decades. From a sociological point of view, one could expect Beck's 'world risk society' to provide the intellectual background for this discussion but the chapter suggests instead to start with another sociologist, Perrow. The chapter borrows analytical notions from Perrow, tight coupling, interactive complexity, negative externalities, society of organisations and 'error prone' versus 'error avoiding' large technical systems (LTS) to explore some of the properties of global risks. If Perrow studied in the 1980s onward a type of global risks through the advent of LTS such as aviation or nuclear power plants and weapons, other authors (e.g. Giddens, Goldin, Guillén) have introduced and discussed systemic risks in relation to globalisation (e.g. financial crises, pandemics, terrorism) in the 1990s onwards while other authors (e.g. Bostrom, Smil) framed the notion of existential risks in relation to extreme events (e.g. asteroid impact, doomsday war, climate catastrophe) in the 2000s. The chapter uses Perrow's ideas to explore this topic. Indeed, it is argued that, to analyse, anticipate, prevent and respond to global risks consists in, quite fundamentally, assessing, (re)designing, managing and regulating the coupling and complexity of LTS. Covid-19 is introduced throughout the chapter, as an example of global risks, among others.

The argument of this paper is that the notions of coupling and complexity introduced by Perrow to... more The argument of this paper is that the notions of coupling and complexity introduced by Perrow to discuss high-risk technologies need to be scaled up from their original scope to a wider, global one considering the evolution of the operational landscape of safetycritical systems. One value of Perrow in the 1980 s was to trigger core debates, contributing to a new form of causal reasoning. It provided a way of thinking about causality within a context of expanding sociotechnical systems such as nuclear power plants, civil commercial aviation or petroleum infrastructures. In the 2020 s, high-risk technologies do not only represent potential for single catastrophic events anymore but are also the sources of wider problems associated with globalised flows (systemic risks) and ecological degradation known as anthropocene (leading to existential risks). In this context, the scope, scale and timeframe of high-risk systems is extended in comparison to Perrow's original work. In these new circumstances, coupling and complexity categories apply to a much wider spectrum of issues than initially conceived by Perrow and notions such as flows, nodes, networks, interconnectedness, and synchronicity should be incorporated to illustrate a move to the global stage. After a presentation and discussion of Perrow's coupling and interaction, the "global turn" in research is discussed, using sociology and history as examples. It is followed by the contribution by Guillén on the "architecture of collapse" characterising our contemporary era. Its implications for safety science research are then explored using Covid-19 as an example.

Safety Culture has now been for almost three decades a highly promoted, advocated and debated but... more Safety Culture has now been for almost three decades a highly promoted, advocated and debated but contentious notion. This article argues first that one needs to differentiate between two waves of studies, debates, controversies and positions. A first one roughly from the late 1980s/early 1990s to mid-2000s which brought an important distinction between interpretive and functionalist views of safety culture, then a second wave, from mid-2000s to nowadays which brings additional and alternative positions among authors. Four views, some more radical and critical, some more neutral and some more enthusiastic about safety culture are differentiated in this article. It is contended that this evolution of the debate, this second wave of studies, should be understood within a broader historical and social context. It is characterised, borrowing insights from management studies, by patterns of interactions between academics, publishers, consultants, regulators and industries. In this context, safety culture appears in a new light, as a product among other (albeit a central one) of a safety field (and market) which is socially structured by this diversity of actors. This helps sensitise, first, the second wave of studies, debates, controversies and positions on safety culture of the past 15 years as identified in this article. Second, approaching safety culture through this angle is an opportunity to questions safety research more globally and, third, an occasion to pinpoint some of the currently unproblematised network properties of high-risk sociotechnical systems.

This chapter examines the topic of managing the unexpected. It starts with coming back on the eng... more This chapter examines the topic of managing the unexpected. It starts with coming back on the engineering, human factors, managerial and governance (safety) principles that once combined coherently, corresponds to one strategy when one wants to characterise the management of the unexpected. A second strategy is to rely on the production of the social sciences of the past thirty to forty years to discuss the problem of definition then of conceptualisation of the unexpected in the context of high-risk systems. Following this second strategy, four threads are identified which help characterise the unexpected, corresponding to four rationales established by three authors who pioneered the field, Barry Turner, Charles Perrow and Jens Rasmussen. These rationales correspond to the ideas of 1) technology out of control, 2) executives (and regulatory) failure, 3) fallible (cognitive) constructs and 4) emergent properties (due to self-organised adaptive agents). They are named using four major intellectual figures of the social sciences,

High Reliability Organisation (HRO) and Resilience Engineering (RE) are two research traditions w... more High Reliability Organisation (HRO) and Resilience Engineering (RE) are two research traditions which have attracted a wide and diverse readership in the past decade. Both have reached the status of central contributions to the field of safety while sharing a similar orientation. This is not without creating tensions or questions, as expressed in the call of this special issue. The contention of this article is that these two schools introduce ways of approaching safety which need to be reflected upon in order to avoid simplifications and hasty judgments about their relative strength, weaknesses or degree of overlapping. HRO has gained strength and legitimacy from (1) studying ethnographically, with an organisational angle, high-risk systems, (2) debating about principles producing organisation reliability in face of high complexity and (3) conceptualising some of these principles into a successful generic model of " collective mindfulness " , with both practical and theoretical success. RE has gained strength and legitimacy from (1) harnessing then deconstructing, empirically and theoretically, the notion of 'human error', (2) argued for a system (and complexity) view and discourse about safety/accidents, (3) and supported this view with the help of (graphical) actionable models and methods (i.e. the engineering orientation). In order to show this, one has to go beyond the past 10 years of RE to include a longer time frame going back to the 80s to the early days of Cognitive Engineering (CE). The approach that is followed here includes therefore a strong historical orientation as a way to better understand the present situation, profile each school, promote complementarities while maintaining nuances.

Structure as an analytical category has a long trail of debates in safety over 40 years but has n... more Structure as an analytical category has a long trail of debates in safety over 40 years but has never been the topic of a dedicated study, until Hopkins' work on the issue of centralised organisational structures. The notion of structure has had different meanings including structure as coupling and complexity (1), as redundancy (2), as self-correcting (3), as underspecified (4), as management system (5), as degree of centralisation (6), as macro social configuration (7). I come back in the first section of this article on this in order to situate Hopkins' argument. To do so, I use the insights from organisation theory on the complex relationships between structure, culture, power, technology, goal and environment. Hopkins' view is that "structure creates culture" which depends on the degree of centralisation (6). In a second section, I go one step further to situate Hopkins' argument, coming back on four decades of publications in order to bring the distance needed to characterise his message, its context (in particular, its rejection of safety culture) and retrospective rational. One conclusion is that his argument allows safety research to explicitly target top management decisions while offering a sociological and practical perspective. However, to elaborate his argument, Hopkins makes a certain number of simplifications which are discussed. I finally add that structure as a degree of centralisation is an opportunity to move one step closer to strategy. This complementary move is needed when one studies empirically daily operations of high-risk systems.

The aim of this article is to explore the contribution of powerful actors of organisations to the... more The aim of this article is to explore the contribution of powerful actors of organisations to the construction of safety in high-risk systems. Accident investigation reports and empirical research of daily operations of high-risk systems target organisational issues since the 1990s. However, although in safety research one can observe a series of disciplines contributing to advance knowledge in this direction, such as sociology, management or political science, nothing much is available in the field of strategy. Yet, the argument of this article is that it is useful to also frame the study of safety and accident as a one which needs a strategic angle of analysis. In a first section, safety research is briefly introduced, then in a second section the field of strategy, including studies of strategic failures. Reasons for the relative absence of an interest in strategy and safety are advanced and argued. One conclusion is as a consequence the need to advance our knowledge on the topic of safety from the point of view of the psychology and sociology of executives and top managers, in relation to strategy. In a last section, illustrations of how strategic decision-making matters tremendously to our understanding of safety is introduced and discussed, distinguishing strategic mistakes, failures and fiascos. Outlines of a research agenda are described. Overall, this article proposes to reformulate the notion of 'latent causes' of disasters as various degree of strategic breakdown.

Our current era is one of profound changes and uncertainties, and one issue is to understand thei... more Our current era is one of profound changes and uncertainties, and one issue is to understand their implications for high-risk systems and critical infrastructures (e.g. nuclear power plants, ships, hospitals, trains, chemical plants). Normal Accidents (NA), Perrow's classic published in 1984, is a useful guide to explore the contemporary epoch, in the third decade of the 21 st century. One reason is that this landmark book has triggered a sustained interest by scholars who have debated, challenged, rejected, refined or expanded its core thesis over almost now 40 years. With La Porte, Sagan, Vaughan and Hopkins' contributions into what can be described as the "standard NA debate" in the late 20 th century and the more recent "new controversies and debates" by Downer, Pritchard or Le Coze in the early 21 st century, the book can still resonate with current changes in the 2020s. These changes include phenomena as large, massive, intertwined, consequential and diverse as the advent of internet and of digital societies, the increase of transnational flows of diverse nature (people, data, capital, images, goods) and the ecological crisis captured by a notion such as the anthropocene. Taking stock, historicising and revisiting NA with such debates and changes in mind leads to characterise a Post NA narrative.

The essay's purpose is to explore the relation between societal safety and the global. It describ... more The essay's purpose is to explore the relation between societal safety and the global. It describes some of the complexities of our contemporary situation. Conceptualising the global is now at the heart of many of current problems and challenges, not least of which is safety. When confronting safety with the category of the global over the past 30 years from the point of view of large scale threats, one can differentiate three consecutive conceptualisations of types of risks for the purposes of the essay: socio-technological risks (1), systemic risks (2) and existential risks (3). These risk types, in turn, can be associated historically with the concepts of high-risk systems (1'), globalisation (2'), and the anthropocene and transhumanism (3'). The categories overlap and do not historically replace each other but are embedded in a nested hierarchy of issues. For each successive type of risk, the notion of the global expends into three different meanings, moving (in terms to be defined) from the techno-socio-sphere (global1), to what can be termed the bio-eco-geo-techno-socio sphere (global2) and finally, to the novel and emerging amalgam, a cosmo-bio-eco-geo-techno-socio 2 sphere (global3). It is argued that our vision of societal safety must be understood through an appreciation of how these three different layers of issues of the global are interwoven, how this global challenges the management and governance of safety, and why in this light our contemporary situation is now one of generalised complexity.

This chapter argues for the importance of visualisations in safety research through a short histo... more This chapter argues for the importance of visualisations in safety research through a short history of the emergence of this scientific field in the 1980s, followed by an introduction to new safety visualisations for the current historical period. To do so, it relies on a selection of visualisations for the three types of issues that structure the domain: identifying and comparing high-risk systems, framing sociotechnical systems and conceptualising safety. Drawings from Perrow, Rasmussen and Reason are used. This chapter then presents three alternative visualisations with the ambition to reflect on a certain number of changes following the 1980s. It visually advocates conceptual notions such as networks, complexity and constructivism, and represents empirical evolutions by acknowledging transformations such as globalisation and the emergence of new categories of risks. The chapter does not argue that visual representations are more important than texts, but rather that they should be more appreciated for their contribution to our ability to address the complexity of safety both in research and practice. This chapter is also, through the help of graphical representations, an opportunity to question the necessary adaptations of safety concepts and theories to their epoch.

This chapter is about managing sociotechnological risks. It is in the 70s that the notion of ‘hig... more This chapter is about managing sociotechnological risks. It is in the 70s that the notion of ‘high-risk’ (or ‘safety critical’) systems started to be distinguished and grouped into an independent category including industries such as the nuclear, aviation, marine, petrochemical or the railways. Any attempt such as this one to introduce this background in a few pages is necessarily restrictive, partly unfair but also a simplified account. And, there are of course many different strategies to do so. One option is to consider the field through the scientific disciplines involved, say sociology, engineering, psychology, ergonomics, management, etc. A second one, quite related to the first, is to introduce pioneers who, from different disciplinary backgrounds, produced seminal contributions used as shared references among various research communities interested in the safety of complex sociotechnological systems. A third one is to look into industry (aviation, nuclear or petrochemical) in order to illustrate and to differentiate the diversity of problems related to sociotechnological risks and how they materialise. Another option is to identify core concepts that sometimes cut across a range of disciplines, authors and industry which offers also good insights into the issues involved with sociotechnological risks. In any case, it is a very challenging task. The intention in this chapter is to combine a bit of these strategies in order to offer the reader a broad vision, and to follow editors’ guidelines specifying the following structure: first, key concepts, second, major debates and third open questions/perspectives.

This article is a contribution to the special issue on the future of safety science. It discusses... more This article is a contribution to the special issue on the future of safety science. It discusses the three areas indicated in the call by the editors: history and evolution of safety science; new models, processes and theories in safety science and emerging risks in safety science. In the first section on the history and evolution of the field, (Re)writing history, I argue that an interesting task is to challenge what has become a taken for granted view of the past. I illustrate this claim by revisiting and challenging the popular view of safety which describes three ages in the evolution of safety science (technical, human and organisational). I then reinforce this by arguing about the presence of relatively independent research traditions which structure our understanding of safety. In the second section on new models, processes and theories, Convergence versus Divergence, I discuss the problem of research traditions developing independently, and I advocate a strategy of convergence to complement this process of divergence, while shortly discussing the practice-theory gap. Finally, in the third section on emerging risks, How is safety globalised?, I argue that one challenge for safety research is to keep up with changes, some of which are perhaps of an unprecedent scale.

This article is a contribution to the special issue on safety science research in the new age of ... more This article is a contribution to the special issue on safety science research in the new age of work. It aims to promotes an interdisciplinary and broad (multilevel) approach of safety, recognising the interplay of technology, tasks, culture, structure, power, strategy, regulation, society and markets At the conceptual level, the article promotes a multilevel approach to change which connects mega-macro (global) trends with meso-micro realities with the help of an analytical (integrative) framework. It argues that safety has become a networked, digital and global reality during the last decades. At the methodological level, ethnographic research is presented as one suitable approach to studying safety in this context. Its relevance is based on prolonged periods of time spent in safety-critical systems observing work combined with interviews concerning daily operations and incidents. At the empirical level, a study of a plant in the chemical industry is used as an illustration of the argument. A narrative of the case is developed, exploring the implications of changes in automation and computerisation, externalisation of activities and organisational structure following a new corporate strategy. Change in plant boundaries, in the level of standardisation, in the amount of bureaucratic work, and in group (and regulatory) control and oversight are discussed along with their implications in terms of the nature of tasks and activities, professional identities, patterns of social interactions and distribution of power (decision making). Through the narrative, the increasingly networked, digital and global reality of the plant is revealed in full, with its multiple implications. The article then discusses the findings and reflects on the current flurry of changes which expose safety-critical systems to new challenges.

Studying safety from a broad (or multilevel) perspective in daily operations is a challenging pro... more Studying safety from a broad (or multilevel) perspective in daily operations is a challenging prospect. The aim of this article, with the help of a case study, is to contribute to its development. In the introduction, broad (multilevel) safety research is introduced. This introduction indicates main authors who have produced in the past thirty to forty years a strong background against which one can build an idea of this challenge. It requires to decipher in real life situations the interactions between technology, task, structure, culture, strategy and environment of high-risk systems. An additional interest is, following the insights gained from the literature, to investigate the importance of strategic decision making in such broad (multilevel) safety approach. A first section discusses methodological issues linked to ethnographic research, and presents the methodology followed. The second section provides a narrative of the case study which combines a historical view of the plant, a description of some of the salient problems of working practices in a production department, an explanation of these problems through an organisational and managerial perspective, a description of the complex patterns of interactions between people in the plant and a strategic analysis of the situation. The last section discusses the interest of a broad (multilevel) research agenda explicitly incorporating the importance, influence and centrality of powerful decision makers, without simplifying the complexity of this issue.

The argument of this paper is that globalisation has reconfigured the landscape and operating con... more The argument of this paper is that globalisation has reconfigured the landscape and operating constraints of high-risk systems. This article helps describe how the operating conditions of high-risk systems have been evolving over the past 30 years. In order to do so, findings from the literature on globalisation, organisation, regulation, multinationals, safety and disasters are considered and linked into an integrative framework. The article has three parts. First, the literature on globalisation is introduced. It is shown that it constitutes a central feature of our time, but that this new historical moment is far from being unambiguous in its nature, implications and consequences. It is contested terrain that has given rise to a variety of interpretations. Second, the article discusses the extent to which safety as a field of research has acknowledged this new situation, concluding that it should be further explored. I argue that issues discussed in the field, such as 'outsourcing' or 'standardisation,' along with 'financialisation', 'digitalisation' or 'self-regulation' should be linked to the broader pattern of globalisation. Third, this statement is empirically illustrated, building on the extensive writings about BP as an example of the failure of a globalised multinational. It is shown that BP's series of disasters between 2005 and 2010 can only be meaningfully understood in the context of a multinational shaping and being shaped by globalisation. BP is the paradigmatic example of a new industrial safety era.

For the past two to three decades, globalisation has transformed the way safety-critical systems ... more For the past two to three decades, globalisation has transformed the way safety-critical systems operate. This specific subset of private and public organisations was distinguished in the literature in the 1980s because of the potential threats they represent to their employees, consumers or third parties (their negative externalities). High-risk or safety-critical systems include, among others, domains such as transportation (railway, aviation, maritime), chemical or nuclear industry but also healthcare. A chemical plant can explode, a ship can sink, a train can derail, an aircraft can crash, and a hospital can inadvertently kill people. Their understanding and regulation are therefore of great concern for societies. In this chapter, I introduce first the category of high-risk systems, what we know about them regarding their ability to perform safely then how the past decades of globalisation transformed their way of operating. I combine several analytical tools to do so and use fieldwork to shortly illustrate with a case study in the chemical industry in the last section before discussing the topic.

A review of the literature shows a lack of knowledge regarding the profession of occupational hea... more A review of the literature shows a lack of knowledge regarding the profession of occupational health and safety (OHS) specialists, especially those responsible for industrial safety. Yet, they are central risk management players in high-risk companies. The aim of this article is to contribute to increasing the knowledge about the OHS profession through empirical data regarding their activities. The study is based upon immersion, lasting several months, within the environment of a safety department of a pharmaceutical chemical substances production site. Firstly, we conducted a study of the general context of the site in order to understand the framework within which the OHS specialists operate. Then, the activities carried out by two OHS specialists were investigated using general and systematic observations. Results concern the contents of the OHS specialists’ activities and their specific features. We show that OHS specialists deal with a large number of topics and theirs are prim...

A review of the literature shows a lack of knowledge regarding the profession of occupational hea... more A review of the literature shows a lack of knowledge regarding the profession of occupational health and safety (OHS) specialists, especially those responsible for industrial safety. Yet, they are central risk management players in high-risk companies. The aim of this article is to contribute to increasing the knowledge about the OHS profession through empirical data regarding their activities. The study is based upon immersion, lasting several months, within the environment of a safety department of a pharmaceutical chemical substances production site. Firstly, we conducted a study of the general context of the site in order to understand the framework within which the OHS specialists operate. Then, the activities carried out by two OHS specialists were investigated using general and systematic observations. Results concern the contents of the OHS specialists' activities and their specific features. We show that OHS specialists deal with a large number of topics and theirs are primarily relational activities, characterised by task interruptions and fragmentation.

Our current era is marked by profound changes and uncertainties. This paper briefly introduces Po... more Our current era is marked by profound changes and uncertainties. This paper briefly introduces Post Normal Accident (Post NA) as a narrative to help understand this new context for safety-critical systems (Le Coze, 2020), with additional texts that I have published over the past 4 years since the book was published (2020-204). The contention is that the seminal book, Normal Accidents (NA), Perrow’s classic, remains relevant to probe our contemporary situation when one historicises then revisits its analytical background and fundamental ideas. In the section Historicising Normal Accidents, I develop an analysis based on major trends of the past two to three decades understood by the concepts of globalisation and the Anthropocene, associated with the new categories of systemic and existential risks. In the second section, Revisiting, I propose to move from NA to Post NA in five steps. I argue about the importance of incorporating conceptual and empirical changes when questioning the contemporary relevance of NA. Theoretically, I cover Perrow’s controversies and legacy. Empirically, I discuss the changing operating landscape and reflect on its implications. The five steps constitute an alternative analytical framework and narrative: Post NA.