A Paradigm Shift Toward Progress for NSMS
By Charles w. Ezell
John Maynard Keyes, just after the turn of the century wrote, “The ideas of economists and political philosophers both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interest is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”
Some seventy years later, Thomas S. Kuhn introduced a phenomenon known as “Paradigm Shift,” which, in a nutshell, means a fundamental change in the model created by established patterns of thought which are entrenched by learned experiences and environmental influences (see William C. Pope’s Managing for Performance Perfection: The Changing Emphasis, pages 166-167 for a detailed explanation).
What does all this have to do with the purpose, philosophy, and mission of our National Safety Management Society? More than we may realize.
It is my belief that our “academic scribbling,” our persistence in holding forth a better way of accomplishing the end result of reduced human suffering and economic waste in the workplace has caused a paradigm shift which is just now bearing fruit, and I offer the following as evidence of my convictions.
According to the National Safety Council, work-related accidents cost our nation $32.5 billion in 1981. Industrial accidents took 12,300 lives that year and disabled 2,100,000 workers.
Along with these grim statistics, there is a ray of hope that things may be getting better. Rates of accidental death and disabling injuries have decreased steadily over the past several years. While the cost has increased substantially to $48.5 billion in 1989 (the latest year for which NSC data is available), workplace deaths have decreased 15.4% to 10,400 and disabling injuries were reduced 19% to 1,700,000.
| A workplace accident is a costly performance mistake or error. By and large, executive-level management has not been willing to assume full responsibility for these kinds of mistakes or errors. |
Without such a reduction in deaths and disabling injuries, the associated cost would have been much greater. Yet, no one can disagree that the human and economic costs are still much too high and should not be tolerated.
What accounts for the improvements? OSHA with its regulatory approach to problems? Not in my estimation. In fact, the OSHA administration has done precious little more than to provide students of sociology with a classic example of Parkinson’s Law as it applies to bureaucracies. Also, the focus of OSHA in the past several years has been on latent rather than patent concerns; that is, on matters that may be injurious to a worker several years in the future such as Hazard Communication, Formaldehyde, Asbestos, Ergonomics. etc., etc.
Safety directors must spend an inordinate amount of time digesting and interpreting the technical details of regulations in the fine print of the Federal Register, including increasingly technical matters of environmental concerns. This time and effort is spent to the detriment of not being able to apply resources which would reduce immediate threats to life and limb. So what accounts for the improvements in terms of disabling injuries and deaths over the past several years? I believe there has been a paradigm shift toward the acceptance of a basic philosophy of integrated safety management; a subscription by management of an “organized body of knowledge” which stems directly from the National Safety Management Society and its “academic scribblers.
I will not attempt to explore all facets of research done by our Society over the years, but I wish to restate the basic core and simple logic of our premise. It can be stated in the simplest of terms:
A workplace accident is a costly performance mistake or error. By and large, executive level management has not been willing to assume full responsibility for these kinds of mistakes or errors.
Business executives have heard since their diaper days that accidents “just happen.” We are all taught from infancy that an accident is unavoidable. It is not until we enter the industrial scene that we begin to hear “accidents are caused.”
When these same executives assume responsibilities in industry, they readily accept the fact that certain kinds of production-related accidents are indeed mistakes or errors. They are held strictly accountable for assuring that these “product or manufacturing” accidents never recur.
Normally, these kinds of accidents, errors, or mistakes, relate directly to the production process. They manifest themselves as losses in the form of poor quality, excessive waste, etc. If effective management control through better training, engineering and/or supervision is not initiated swiftly and surely after such a goof, the responsible executive will pay a hefty penalty. This penalty can come not only in the form of reduced profitability for the company; his very job could be on the line!
Too often, the kind of goof which produces personal injury to an employee is not thought of as the kind of mistake or error for which executive-level management should feel full responsibility and for which it should be held strictly accountable. The blame is more often than not leveled at the injured employee for some careless or foolish act. Yet, the cause(s) of the injury-producing mistake and the required corrective action are identical to those which produced the production-related loss.
There is evidence that more and more enlightened executives are beginning to apply the same kind of management-oriented approach to injury-producing mistakes as they have historically applied to production-related mistakes. Such evidence can be found in an article appearing in the January 29, 1991, issue of the Wall Street Journal under the headline of “Safety Pays, A Growing Number of Companies Find:”
“Safety and productivity, once viewed as antagonistic, have become bedfellows. Some companies say better safety practices improve morale, boost output, trim worker-compensation costs and strengthen public relations. ‘Safety fits in nicely with the quality leadership process,’ says Eastman Kodak safety director James Mitchell.
“DuPont executives open all meetings with safety reports. The company has redesigned its machines for safety, and it fires managers with poor safety records. Safety chief William Mottel calls safety and efficiency ‘Siamese twins.’ Alcoa tells workers to hold onto stair rails and don't enter taxis if the cabbies aren't wearing seat belts. Workers at a Monsanto factory watch for work habits that could cause accidents.
“Unions balk at some safety programs because companies often adopt them without consultation.”
Indeed, there has been a paradigm shift due in large measure to the availability of an organized body of knowledge compiled and assembled by our very own “academic scribblers of a few years back” in the persons of Bird, Boylston, Creswell, Petersen, Pope, et al.
Paradigm shifts, like attitudes are not contrived; they are a gradual encroachment of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs which are set in motion to solve problems which could not be solved by the traditional approach. But, as stated so eloquently by Keynes, a paradigm can be influenced and all NSMS members can take considerable pride in recognizing the important part our Society has played in influencing this major shift.
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