Target Culture: Lessons in Unintended Consequences

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

Goats in Sheep Pens

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

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

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

Why Do We Resist New Thinking About Safety and Systems?

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

John Locke and the Unintended Consequences of Targets

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

“So You Have an Under-Reporting Problem?” System Barriers to Incident Reporting

The reporting of safety occurrences and safety-relevant issues and conditions is an essential activity in…

Using the Safety Culture Discussion Cards: Tips for SWOT analysis From a User

David Thompson, a Human Factors Specialist from NATS, UK, has provided some feedback on the…

Using the Safety Culture Discussion Cards to Help Understand Textual Data

‘What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of…

Five Questions About Boredom, Fatigue and Vigilance

1. How different are boredom and fatigue? Both affect our ability to pay attention –…

Should the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors be more of a campaigning organisation? Yes.

Published in ‘The Ergonomist’, Newsletter of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, October 2012, p. 4…