Rethinking Safety in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

Rethinking Safety in Complex Sociotechnical Systems is essential reading for safety professionals, researchers, and graduate students across multiple disciplines including engineering, health sciences, sociology, and safety science.

This title rethinks traditional risk management paradigms in environments where error is believed to have catastrophic consequences. Challenging deterministic, causal, and punitive models, it proposes an adaptive approach based on the complexity of sociotechnical systems. It establishes risk management as an autonomous scientific discipline, tracing its evolution from early cause-and-effect models to contemporary frameworks that integrate the resonance inherent in complex systems. The book critiques linear cause-effect views and their inadequacy when addressing dynamic systems with nonlinear interdependencies and inherent uncertainty and it analyzes ultra-safe industries as complex adaptive systems where human, technological, and organizational interactions generate emergent behaviors impossible to predict through fragmented analysis. Attention is given to how beliefs, common sense, and cognitive biases distort decision-making and the case is made for integrating interdisciplinary perspectives from social sciences and epistemology to counteract them. Proposing strengthening organizational resilience through proactive safety cultures characterized by just culture, anonymous reporting, and transparent communication, the book makes the case for hybrid governance models combining bureaucracy and adhocracy, while addressing the critical gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done. Readers will gain practical tools for analyzing complex accidents, improving safety management practices, and designing more resilient organizations. Rethinking Safety in Complex Sociotechnical Systems is essential reading for safety professionals, researchers, and graduate students across multiple disciplines including engineering, health sciences, sociology, and safety science.