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Safety Differently: Human Factors for a New Era
The second edition of a bestseller, Safety Differently: Human Factors for a New Era is a complete update of Ten Questions About Human Error: A New View of Human Factors and System Safety. Today, the unrelenting pace of technology change and growth of complexity calls for a different kind of safety thinking. Automation and new technologies have resulted in new roles, decisions, and vulnerabilities whilst practitioners are also faced with new levels of complexity, adaptation, and constraints. It is becoming increasingly apparent that conventional approaches to safety and human factors are not equipped to cope with these challenges and that a new era in safety is necessary.
In addition to new material covering changes in the field during the past decade, the book takes a new approach to discussing safety. The previous edition looked critically at the answers human factors would typically provide and compared/contrasted them with current research and insights at that time. The edition explains how to turn safety from a bureaucratic accountability back into an ethical responsibility for those who do our dangerous work, and how to embrace the human factor not as a problem to control, but as a solution to harness.
See What's in the New Edition:
New approach reflects changes in the field Updated coverage of system safety and technology changes Latest human factors/ergonomics research applicable to safety
Organizations, companies, and industries are faced with new demands and pressures resulting from the dynamics and nature of the modern marketplace and from the development and introduction of new technologies. This new era calls for a different kind of safety thinking, a thinking that sees people as the source of diversity, insight, creativity, and wisdom about safety, not as the source of risk that undermines an otherwise safe system. It calls for a kind of thinking that is quicker to trust people and mistrust bureaucracy, and that is more committed to actually preventing harm than to looking good. This book takes a forward-looking and assertively progressive view that prepares you to resolve current safety issues in any field.
In addition to new material covering changes in the field during the past decade, the book takes a new approach to discussing safety. The previous edition looked critically at the answers human factors would typically provide and compared/contrasted them with current research and insights at that time. The edition explains how to turn safety from a bureaucratic accountability back into an ethical responsibility for those who do our dangerous work, and how to embrace the human factor not as a problem to control, but as a solution to harness.
See What's in the New Edition:
New approach reflects changes in the field Updated coverage of system safety and technology changes Latest human factors/ergonomics research applicable to safety
Organizations, companies, and industries are faced with new demands and pressures resulting from the dynamics and nature of the modern marketplace and from the development and introduction of new technologies. This new era calls for a different kind of safety thinking, a thinking that sees people as the source of diversity, insight, creativity, and wisdom about safety, not as the source of risk that undermines an otherwise safe system. It calls for a kind of thinking that is quicker to trust people and mistrust bureaucracy, and that is more committed to actually preventing harm than to looking good. This book takes a forward-looking and assertively progressive view that prepares you to resolve current safety issues in any field.
- GenresNonfiction
312 pages, Paperback
First published June 14, 2014
About the author
Sidney Dekker
46 books56 followersSidney W. A. Dekker (born 1969, "near Amsterdam"),is a Professor at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, where he founded the Safety Science Innovation Lab. He is also Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland.
Previously, Dekker was Professor of human factors and system safety at Lund University in Sweden,where he founded the Leonardo da Vinci Laboratory for Complexity and Systems Thinking, and flew as First Officer on Boeing 737s for Sterling and later Cimber Airlines out of Copenhagen. Dekker is a high-profile scholar and is known for his work in the fields of human factors and safety.
Previously, Dekker was Professor of human factors and system safety at Lund University in Sweden,where he founded the Leonardo da Vinci Laboratory for Complexity and Systems Thinking, and flew as First Officer on Boeing 737s for Sterling and later Cimber Airlines out of Copenhagen. Dekker is a high-profile scholar and is known for his work in the fields of human factors and safety.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 27, 2022
If you’re looking for a practical book on Human Factors, this probably isn’t it. It’s very research and theory heavy and is not an easy read, however, certainly challenges your thinking on safety. 3.5 stars for me.
December 29, 2020
Reading this book to answer my assignment. I became more engaged in the assignment because of this book.
October 13, 2014
A better title would be 'History and a New Philosophy of Human Factors'.
This isn't a book about Human Factors. The huge majority of the book is actually the history of HF as a discipline, all framed to support the author's theory about a fundamental flaw in the philosophy of the discipline, and how to remedy it.
It isn't until chapter 6, at page 173, entitled 'Methods and Models' that the, well, methods and models of HF are discussed. Up until then, it's a historical survey of the field. Given that this book is only 272 pages of text, giving 173 of them to a historical survey is quite generous. But even the Methods and Models chapter is a high level view, a sort of Philosophy of Human Factors, not anything that could be mistaken for an introduction to the field.
The author's purpose in writing this book seems to be primarily to document and discredit any HF method that ignores broad, systemic context in any HF analysis. Lab-based studies get a lot of condescension. The argument is, i think, that as HF moves into the silicon age, the very philosophy of the field will need a reboot.
Whether or not you agree with the content or presentation thereof, the book itself is sorely lacking. There are a few images in the book, and they're all of the black-and-white, photocopy-of-a-photocopy quality that makes it nearly impossible to distinguish anything at all in them. The images are so low quality that the book would have been improved by omitting them. The text is slightly clearer than the images, but not much. Jargon flies hard and fast. I tripped over the word 'hermeneutic' on page 172. Not being familiar with that word, i flipped to the index. What i found there was 'Hermeneutics, universality of, 198, 202'. Only there on page 198 are we treated to the definition ('the study of interpretation' though google suggests it's usually applied to the bible or literary texts).
As i said above, this is not a book about HF. About the only category of person i could imagine reading and making use of this book would be a manager transferred into supervising an HF department, who wants familiarize themselves with the field whilst simultaneously finding a way to make their own print on their new department.
If you're actually interested in the field of HF, try books like Human Factors in Simple and Complex Systems'. If what you really like is the stories of accidents, and then analyses of what went wrong from a HF perspective, try 'Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error'.
This isn't a book about Human Factors. The huge majority of the book is actually the history of HF as a discipline, all framed to support the author's theory about a fundamental flaw in the philosophy of the discipline, and how to remedy it.
It isn't until chapter 6, at page 173, entitled 'Methods and Models' that the, well, methods and models of HF are discussed. Up until then, it's a historical survey of the field. Given that this book is only 272 pages of text, giving 173 of them to a historical survey is quite generous. But even the Methods and Models chapter is a high level view, a sort of Philosophy of Human Factors, not anything that could be mistaken for an introduction to the field.
The author's purpose in writing this book seems to be primarily to document and discredit any HF method that ignores broad, systemic context in any HF analysis. Lab-based studies get a lot of condescension. The argument is, i think, that as HF moves into the silicon age, the very philosophy of the field will need a reboot.
Whether or not you agree with the content or presentation thereof, the book itself is sorely lacking. There are a few images in the book, and they're all of the black-and-white, photocopy-of-a-photocopy quality that makes it nearly impossible to distinguish anything at all in them. The images are so low quality that the book would have been improved by omitting them. The text is slightly clearer than the images, but not much. Jargon flies hard and fast. I tripped over the word 'hermeneutic' on page 172. Not being familiar with that word, i flipped to the index. What i found there was 'Hermeneutics, universality of, 198, 202'. Only there on page 198 are we treated to the definition ('the study of interpretation' though google suggests it's usually applied to the bible or literary texts).
As i said above, this is not a book about HF. About the only category of person i could imagine reading and making use of this book would be a manager transferred into supervising an HF department, who wants familiarize themselves with the field whilst simultaneously finding a way to make their own print on their new department.
If you're actually interested in the field of HF, try books like Human Factors in Simple and Complex Systems'. If what you really like is the stories of accidents, and then analyses of what went wrong from a HF perspective, try 'Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error'.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews