Safety Management: A Qualitative Systems Approach

by John Booth Davies, Alastair Ross, Brendan Wallace

Professionals striving for accident reduction must deal with systems in which both technical and human elements play equal and complementary roles. However, many of the existing techniques in ergonomics and risk management concentrate on plant and technical issues and downplay human factors and "subjectivity." Safety A Qualitative Systems Approach describes a body of theories and data that addresses safety by drawing on systems theory and applied psychology, stressing the importance of human activity within systems. It explains in detail the central roles of social consensus and reliability and the nature of verbal reports and functional discourse.

This text presents a new approach to safety management, offering a path to both greater safety and to economic savings. It presents a series of methodological tools that have proven to be reliable through extensive use in the rail and nuclear industries. These methods allow organizational and systems failures to be analyzed much more effectively in terms of quantity, precision, and usefulness.

The concepts and tools described in this book are particularly valuable for reliability engineers, risk managers, human factors specialists, and safety managers and professionals in safety-critical organizations.

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

John Booth Davies (1944-2017) was Emeritus Professor at the University of Strathclyde, acting as Director of the Centre for Applied Social Psychology between 1998 and 2011. He was Chair of the Scottish Government working group on Drug Prevention, and for 18 years, was editor in chief of the journal, Addiction Research and Theory. He published works on various subjects, such as psychology, addiction, safety, and music.