Heinrich thesis

Heinrich’s Local Rationality: Shouldn’t ‘New View’ Thinkers Ask Why Things Made Sense To Him?

Jens Rasmussen:

“If you don’t understand why it made sense for people to do what they did, it is not because they were behaving really strangely, bizarrely, or erroneously, It is because your perspective is wrong.”

Concepts and ideas take on new forms that may or even will escape the intentions of their creators.

Discourse and language matter in theory and professional literature

“New propositions must start from somewhere. Our opinion is therefore always a matter of judgment based on our appreciation of these transformations, explorations and associations of earlier works, but also the rhetoric of authors.” (Le Coze, 2013, p.209)

Critique of ‘old’ safety theories and approaches contains substance as well as ethical implications. When we offer critique, we have a choice of what story we want to tell - just as is the case with accident investigations. Critique does not only serve scientific purposes, or to propose better/alternative approaches. The discourse of this critique can also serve other goals, for example ideological purposes, or even as a way to market a product one has to sell.

Exploring local rationality is useful

• suspends judgement
• helps creating richer understanding

Primary sources are essential for critical reading and thinking

Other findings

• The increased number of academic safety publications.

• The practices of citing within safety literature.

• Ways of dealing with and reducing quotation errors, notably concentrating on systemic elements as enabling easy access to primary sources and reducing pressures that encourage taking shortcuts.

Heinrich’s Local Rationality: Shouldn’t ‘New View’ Thinkers Ask Why Things Made Sense To Him?

Want more?

https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/8975267

Some conclusions

How does this match?

With the 'new view'

• Lacking context, depth, richness
• Cherry picking
• Single stories
• Normative and judgement
• Bad apples and blame
• Where is the local rationality perspective?

With what Heinrich said:

• Attributions tend to lack substance
• Quotation errors

What is local rationality?

Why did it make sense to Heinrich?

Bounded rationality: "The meaning of rationality in situations where the complexity of the environment is immensely greater than the computational powers of the adaptive system." (Simon, 1969)

Local rationality: Why do things make sense to people at the time, given knowledge, experience, objectives, conflicts, resources, context, etc.

An approach to understand organisational events (accidents), here applied to studying and understanding theory and critique.

Science

• Systematic approaches
• Fact-based
• "Persuasion"

Direct causes

• Practicality

"Real" causes

• early: opposed to "so-called" causes
• later: reversability

Outline

The ‘new view’

Round 1:

• Who was Heinrich?
• What is the ‘new view’?
• What is local rationality?

Round 2:

• What did Heinrich do?
• What does the 'new view' say about Heinrich?
• How do these two match?

Round 3:

• Why did it make sense to Heinrich?
• Why does it make sense to ‘new view’ authors?

Final: What is in this for us?

What did Heinrich do?

The program aims to deepen students’ knowledge, skills and understanding of human factors and system safety. All courses focus students on engaging, contrasting and comparing advanced literature in the field, so as to augment their understanding both of substantive problems and methodologies for approaching them.

Pick a position and defend it!

Development of knowledge within safety

Contribution to safety science:

• Engages with founding principles of the safety profession, and the newest thinking
• Uncovered and draws on "lost" sources - richer basis
• Understand instead of criticize
• Provides a critical look at safety science

‘Best of’ - “unified framework” (Petersen, 1971)

Recognizable metaphors, ratios

Practical principles, tools, examples

Main themes:

• 1. Scientific approach
• 2. Cost and efficiency
• 3. Causation and accident sequence
• 4. The role of workers
• 5. Triangle and reacting on weak signals
• 6. Role of management
• 7. Axioms of safety
• 8. Professionalization of safety
• 9. Practical accident prevention
• 10. Safety management
• 11. Social engagement

"Part of professional development consists of cultivating an appreciation of historical roots of current issues, questions, and concepts." (Weick, 1995, p.64)

Who was Heinrich?

• 1886 - 1962
• Assistant Superintendent of the Engineering and Inspection Division, Travelers Insurance 1925-1956
• Speaker, author, practitioner, teacher, committee member
• Highly influential for the safety profession until today
• Received serious critique in recent years

What does the 'new view' say about Heinrich?

Heinrich's work

• Industrial Accident Prevention (5 different editions: 1931, 1941, 1950, 1959, 1980)
• 50+ (safety) papers from 1923 to 1956
• The Supervisor's Safety Manual (1943)
• Basics of Supervision (1944)
• Formula for Supervision (1949)
• Management and Controlling Employee Performance (1969, w. Lateiner)
• Other: ‘Heinrich Cause Code’ (1937 and 1941), the ASME Standard Form for Use in Self Appraisal of Industrial Plants (1947), and the book of the Uniform Boiler and Pressure Vessels Laws Society (1957)

General:

• Negative tone
• "obsolete" / "outdated"

Attributions:

• Zero
• Fixed ratios
• Lagging indicators
• Bureaucracy
• Behaviourism
• Taylorism

Why does it make sense to ‘new view’ authors?

• Language: pedagogical contrasts, discursive
• Timing
• Creating a new movement: "common enemy", Heinrich as a symbol