Safety after neoliberalism

•Neoliberalism promotes privatization, free markets, and deregulation.•Neoliberal safety management links to bureaucratic overreach, responsibilization and limiting limited autonomy.•This paper offers a preview of safety and safety management after neoliberalism.•Safety can return to trusting and en...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Safety science 2020-05, Vol.125, p.104630, Article 104630
Main Author: Dekker, Sidney W.A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomy
Deregulation
Globalization
Human performance
Liability
Neoliberalism
Occupational safety
Participatory equality
Privatization
Safety
Safety management
Supply chains
Workers' compensation
Working conditions
Workplace injuries
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Neoliberalism promotes privatization, free markets, and deregulation.•Neoliberal safety management links to bureaucratic overreach, responsibilization and limiting limited autonomy.•This paper offers a preview of safety and safety management after neoliberalism.•Safety can return to trusting and enabling practitioner decision discretion; and rebalancing professional judgment and risk competence. Neoliberalism refers to the political, economic and social arrangements that have become globally dominant since the 1980s. It promotes privatization, free markets, and deregulation. Neoliberal governance can be linked to safety management by stifling rules developed by non-experts, bureaucratic overreach, imposition of discipline and accountability, and a hemming in of autonomy and discretion on the frontline. Using a variety of sources, this paper examines what safety and safety management can look like after neoliberalism. Centrally, it hinges on changing the belief that complex risks can be managed by rule-based uncertainty reduction, documentation-based liability management, or shrinking the bandwidth of allowable human performance. Safety after neoliberalism involves regulation on the basis of capacities to make things go right as opposed to compliance; de-bureaucratizing safety by putting safety expertise closer to the ‘messy details’ of actual practice, and instituting investigations and restorative incident responses that emphasize safe working conditions as a collective responsibility. In addition, safety after neoliberalism takes a fresh look at global supply chains, participatory equality, and workers’ compensation practices.
ISSN:0925-7535
1879-1042
DOI:10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104630