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Understanding and Improving Work & Life

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“Are We the Baddies?!” Symbols and Organisational Cultures

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 08/11/201320/03/2023

Once your own culture becomes invisible to you, you know you have become a victim…

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  • Human Factors/Ergonomics

The HAL 9000 Explanation: “It Can Only Be Attributable to Human Error”

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 26/10/201310/03/2023

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is a problem aboard Discovery One. The HAL 9000…

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  • Culture

The Principles of Punk Rock at Work

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 05/10/201320/03/2023

About the time I was born, a new musical genre emerged. Disillusioned with the rock…

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  • Human Factors/Ergonomics

‘Human error’: The Handicap of Human Factors, Safety and Justice

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 21/09/201310/03/2023

“Oh my God. I told those guys at safety that it was dangerous and one day we would lose concentration and pay for it. I already told those guys at safety that it was very dangerous! We are human and this can happen to us. This curve is inhuman!”

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  • Culture

Safety Culture Cards Application: Exploring Experiences Using Schein’s Cycle

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 26/08/201324/04/2023

The safety culture discussion cards are now in use in a number of countries within…

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  • Systems Thinking

Target Culture: Lessons in Unintended Consequences

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 02/07/201324/03/2023

By Steven Shorrock & Tony Licu The text in this article first appeared in HindSight…

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  • Systems Thinking

Goats in Sheep Pens

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 26/06/201320/03/2023

When I was younger, my family had a smallholding with a few animals including chickens, ducks,…

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  • safety

If You Want to Understand Risk, You Need to Get Out From Behind Your Desk

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 22/05/201328/02/2023

I saw this poster in an airport some time ago. It is an advert for…

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  • Humanistic Psychology

Why Do We Resist New Thinking About Safety and Systems?

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 12/04/201324/03/2023

Something I have been thinking about for a while is the way that we look…

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  • Systems Thinking

John Locke and the Unintended Consequences of Targets

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 17/03/201324/03/2023

With the huge evidence of the destructive effect of targets in complex systems such as…

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About the Author

Steven Shorrock is an interdisciplinary humanistic, systems and design practitioner interested in understanding and improving work and life.

Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) | Chartered Ergonomist and Human Factors Specialist (CErgHF) | BSc (Hons) MSc (Eng) PhD

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Categories

  • safety (122)
  • Human Factors/Ergonomics (95)
  • Systems Thinking (84)
  • Culture (30)
  • Humanistic Psychology (21)

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  • safety (75)
  • human factors (64)
  • Systems Thinking (59)
  • safety-II (51)
  • work-as-done (51)

Year

  • 2026 (139)
  • 2025 (30)
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  • 2023 (107)
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Human Factors & Ergonomics in Practice

'Human Factors & Ergonomics in Practice' concerns the real practice of human factors and ergonomics (HF/E), conveying the perspectives and experiences of practitioners and other stakeholders in a variety of industrial sectors, organisational settings and working contexts. Buy direct from Routledge.

Tags

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Top Posts

  • I Crash: Texts from M.E.
  • Reflections on the Autistic Spectrum: A Critical Response to Uta Frith's Views
  • The Varieties of Human Work
  • Four Kinds of Thinking: 2. Systems Thinking
  • Proxies for Work-as-Done: 1. Work-as-Imagined
  • Twelve Properties of Effective Classification Schemes
  • Four Kinds Of Thinking: 1. Humanistic Thinking
  • Systems Thinking for Safety: Ten Principles (A White Paper)
  • Why Is It Just So Difficult? Barriers to ‘Just Culture’ in the Real World
  • What Human Factors Isn't: 1. Common Sense

Archives

    Work-as-done is the work that people actually do, cognitive, verbal and manually. Work-as-judged is the judgement, evaluation or appraisal of work, via other proxies for work-as-done. Work-as-simulated is the work that is imitated or recreated in some way for the purposes of learning, testing, design, research, assessment, or exploration. Work-as-instructed is the explanation and demonstration describing how work is to be conducted or performed; the work that people are taught to do. Work-as-analysed is the process and product of examination, decomposition, categorisation, modelling and representation of work. Work-as-measured is the quantification of aspects of work: the work that is represented through numbers, metrics, indicators, scores, targets, dashboards, and other forms of quantification. Work-as-observed is the observation of the work of others, formally or informally - directly, remotely, live, or recorded - and the interpretation of what is observed by the observer. Work-as-disclosed is the work that people say that they (or others) do or did, either in formal or informal accounts. Work-as-prescribed is the formalisation, specification and design of work. It is the work that people ‘should do’, especially according to policies, procedures, rules, and so on.

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