Search

Humanistic Systems

Understanding and Improving Work & Life

Menu
Skip to content
  • Home
  • Collections: Albums & EPs
  • Top 40 Posts
  • Book: HF/E in Practice
  • Publications & Products
  • Talks & Events
  • About

Tag: Systems Thinking

  • Systems Thinking

Recovery from Command-and-Control: A Twelve-Step Program

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 12/07/201420/03/2023

Most of us in democratic countries would hate to see the rise authoritarianism. When we…

Read More
  • safety

Organisations and the Ghosts of Failures Past, Present and Yet to Come

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 02/04/201420/03/2023

How do organisations learn? It is fairly uncontroversial to say that we, as individuals and…

Read More
  • safety

Safety-II as Disruptive Innovation

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 08/03/201419/03/2023

The field of safety management has operated within the same paradigm for decades: finding and…

Read More
  • safety

Seven Questions on Safety-II: Ensuring Things Go Right

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 04/03/201419/03/2023

This post is an article that was published in The Ergonomist: Newsletter of the Institute…

Read More
  • safety

Six Thinking Hats for Safety

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 20/02/201419/03/2023

Almost a year ago on the safetydifferently blog, Sidney Dekker asked “Can safety renew itself?“.…

Read More
  • 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…

Read More
  • 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…

Read More
  • 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,…

Read More
  • 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…

Read More

Posts pagination

Previous Page Page 1 … Page 5 Page 6

Support Humanistic Systems

Humanistic Systems has been a free blog since 2012. The content is based on many thousands of hours of work. If you find the work personally valuable, and would like to support the site, please consider a contribution to running costs.

£10.00

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Humanistic Systems has been a free blog since 2012. The content is based on many thousands of hours of work. If you find the work personally valuable, and would like to support the site, please consider a contribution to running costs.

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£50.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated. Thank you.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Donate
Donate monthly
Donate yearly

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

Join 5,130 other subscribers
Follow @stevenshorrock
Follow Humanistic Systems on WordPress.com

Categories

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

Tags

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

Year

  • 2026 (142)
  • 2025 (30)
  • 2024 (36)
  • 2023 (107)
  • 2022 (52)

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

ABCD accidents album1 album2 album3 album4 album5 album6 album7 album8 album9 album10 album11 album12 art ATC aviation blame change communication community competency context culture decision making deformation professionelle design empathy ep4 ergonomics expertise fatigue featured healthcare human error human factors Humanistic psychology human performance just culture justice language learning local rationality management mental health methods normal work organisational culture organisations practice profession professionalism psychology ptsd research safety safety-I safety-II safety culture safety management systems safety Systems Thinking targets teams teamwork technology theatre training wellbeing work work-as-disclosed work-as-done work-as-imagined work-as-judged work-as-prescribed

Top Posts

  • Reflections on the Autistic Spectrum: A Critical Response to Uta Frith's Views
  • Invisible Worlds: Celtic Folklore for Living with Chronic Conditions and Dynamic Disability
  • The Varieties of Human Work
  • I Crash: Texts from M.E.
  • Mind your Mindset: Safety-I and Safety-II
  • Four Kinds of ‘Human Factors’: 2. Factors of Humans
  • Four Kinds of 'Human Factors': 1. The Human Factor
  • Why Is It Just So Difficult? Barriers to ‘Just Culture’ in the Real World
  • Work and How to Survive It: Lesson 1. Understand ‘How Work Goes'
  • Twenty Five Years: Reflections on the Practice of Improving Work

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.

    Contact

    contact [at] humanisticsystems [dot] com

    Follow

    • X
    • LinkedIn

    Blog Stats

    • 587,276 hits
    Blog at WordPress.com.
    ×

    Loading Comments...