A system dynamics approach in modeling organizational tradeoffs in safety management

Abstract

The mining industry is still ranked highly amongst the economic sectors with the highest fatality rates. Earlier approaches to safety have attributed this to the lack of a comprehensive safety management system that employs effective safety barriers. A system theoretic approach to safety provides a better basis for looking deeper into the interaction of technical, workplace and organizational factors, their magnitude of effects, and their time characteristics. This study presents a system dynamics model of safety and production that looks deeper into their organizational tradeoffs. A safety model integrates aspects of safety culture, worker motivation, and human reliability in an effort to examine how risk evolves over time. Additional models of task management and human resources are developed to trace the interactions between safety and production as well as to examine alternative job designs that can reduce risk. The simulation model has been tested for a number of step to increase production demands and the impact on safety over the course of 5 years. HIGHLIGHTS A methodology has been developed for modeling safety management based on system dynamics. The system dynamics model integrates safety with other organizational processes, such as production and human resources management. System dynamics allow explicit modeling of decision tradeoffs between organizational processes. Emphasis has been given on the evolution of risk over a large period of time where hidden problems may materialize later in the future.

Team perception of the radiation safety climate in the hybrid angiography suite: A cross-sectional study

“…Previous research has emphasized the key psychological role of motivational processes in employees' work behavior and team functioning [39,40]. Although safety motivation has previously been shown to mediate the relationship between safety climate and safety-related behaviors [16,28,29], we were not able to replicate this in the hybrid angiography suite.…”

Exploring the Relationships between Safety Compliance, Safety Participation and Safety Outcomes: Considering the Moderating Role of Job Burnout

“…Further analyzing the results, first, we drew our samples from a high-risk industry, that is, the coal industry. Comparing with the construction industry, which is also a typical high-risk industry [ 45 ], there are several similarities between these two industries. On the one hand, regarding the characteristics of the work, in both industries, the work is complicated, dynamic, dangerous and labor intensive [ 46 ].…”

John Senders, Human Error, and System Safety

“…In the four decades since the Clambake Conferences, error causation research that began primarily in nuclear power generation and aviation has been conducted in such systems as mining (Boukas & Kontogiannis, 2019), manufacturing (Marquardt, 2019), marine piloting (National Academy of Sciences, 1994), Brooks et al, 2018), space transportation (Vaughan, 1994), military aviation (Miranda, 2018), response to terrorism (Bye et al, 2019), equipment maintenance and repair (Drury, 1999;Hobbs & Williamson, 2003 Leaver & Reader, 2016), among others. Theoretical and applied research has since addressed such error-related issues as situation awareness (Endsley, 1995), mode awareness in automated systems (Sarter & Woods, 1995), decision-making in dynamic settings (Klein, 1993: Orasanu, 1993, team performance (Salas et al, 2008), and safety culture (Guldenmund, 2000).…”