Safety Management Systems and their Origins Insights from the Aviation Industry 1st edition by Corinne Bieder 1000737284 9781000737288

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 A Perspective Reflecting a Diverse Background and Experience

1.2 The SMS in Aviation: Step Change or Decoy?

1.3 The Outline

Chapter 2 A Composite Methodology

2.1 Document Analysis: Contrasting Sources

2.2 Literature Review: Shades of Gray

2.3 A Historical Approach: Written Sources

2.4 Oral History: Interviewing Old-Timers of Safety Science

2.5 Qualitative Content Analysis: A Manual Approach for a Limited Sample Size

2.6 A Reflexive Analysis or Auto-ethnography

Chapter 3 Safety Actors’ Version: The SMS as the New Safety Frontier

3.1 What Is an SMS?—Global Overview

3.1.1 What Is an SMS Meant For?

3.1.2 What Is the Definition of an SMS?

3.1.3 What Are the SMS Novelties and Promises?

3.1.4 What Does an SMS Consist Of?

3.2 The SMS in Aviation: A Case Study

3.2.1 What Is the SMS Meant For?

3.2.2 What Does the SMS Consist Of?

3.2.3 What Does the SMS Look Like in Practice?

3.3 Conclusion: From Reliance on SMS Standards to Organizational Reflexivity—A Matter of Philosophy

Chapter 4 What Does the SMS Actually Do, and Is It Up to Its Safety Promises?

4.1 How the SMS Actual Users Perceive It

4.2 What the SMS Actually Does: An Insiders’ Perspective

4.2.1 Conceptual Shortcuts and Assumptions

4.2.2 Methodological Limitations

4.2.3 Practical Limitations

4.3 What Makes Safety So Specific?

4.4 Conclusion: Beyond the Face Value of the SMS

Chapter 5 Why Did the SMS Emerge and Spread?

5.1 New Safety Challenges

5.1.1 Technological Evolution

5.1.2 Fragmented and Extended Enterprises

5.1.3 Interconnected Infrastructures and Organizations

5.1.4 An Increasing Economic Pressure

5.2 The Intellectual Context around Safety: Diverse Schools of Thought, Evolving Conceptual Frames

5.2.1 The Risk Management Perspective on Safety

5.2.2 The Human Factors and Managerial/Organizational Perspective on Safety

5.2.3 The Organizational and Social Perspective on Safety

5.3 A Variety of Motivations to Move toward a New Safety Management Approach

5.3.1 Insurance Companies: Better Calibrating Premiums

5.3.2 Industrials: Trauma, Ethics, and Performance

5.3.3 Regulators: Overcoming the Pitfalls of Command and Control

5.3.4 Civil Society: A Growing Suspicion

5.4 An Overall Context Fostering the Convergence toward Safety Management Systems

5.4.1 An External Injunction to Justify Efficiency and Be Transparent

5.4.2 The Quality Management Era

5.5 The Dissemination of the SMS

5.5.1 Bibliometric Perspective

5.5.2 The Circulation and Exchange of Safety Management-Related Ideas Across Communities, Industries, and Countries: How Ideas Traveled

5.6 How Did the SMS Land in Aviation?

5.6.1 Introduction of the SMS into the Aviation World: Preexisting Safety Landscape and Main Dates

5.6.2 How Come the Notion of SMS Did Not Reach Aviation Earlier: A Closed World

5.6.3 Motivations to Change Approaches: A Regulators’ Concern above All

5.6.4 How Did the SMS Make Its Way Through: Internal Forces, Tenuous Bridges between the Closed World of Aviation and the Outside World, or Both?

5.7 Conclusion: The SMS as an Emanation of the Time and Context within the Industry and Way Beyond

Chapter 6 Beyond the SMS: Toward More Contextualized Perspectives on Safety

6.1 Making the SMS a More Efficient Safety Enhancement Approach

6.1.1 A Broader View of Risk Management: Wider Scope, Time Frame, and Reach

6.1.2 Managing Risks: More in the Ways of Working Than in the Formal Processes, Methods, and Outcomes

6.2 Revisiting the Foundations of the SMS: Acknowledging Uncertainty and Its Manifold Impacts

6.2.1 From Risk Management to Realities in the Field: Coping with Varying Complex and Sometimes Unanticipated Situations

6.2.2 Acknowledging Uncertainty: Increasing Evidence at All Levels but Remaining Confusion

6.2.3 Living with Uncertainty: Revisiting the Main Challenges in Today’s Context

6.3 Dimming the Spotlight on Safety to Put It Back in Context: A Condition to Better Apprehend It

6.3.1 Safety: One Stake among Others, Neither Isolated nor Stand-Alone

6.3.2 Safety as Competing with Other Stakes: The Trade-Off Perspective (A Zero-Sum Game)

6.3.3 Safety as Part of the Same Boat as Other Stakes: The Conjoint Perspective

6.3.4 Fostering Synergies versus Nurturing Tensions: Proposal and Challenges

6.4 Conclusion: Contextualization, Inclusion, and Humility as Common Denominators Whatever the Ambition

Chapter 7 Conclusion

7.1 Insights from Different Versions of the Safety Management System

7.2 The Proposed Ways Forward

7.3 A Multidisciplinary Analysis: An Asset to Apprehend Complexity

7.4 The SMS, a Step Change in Aviation Safety?

Epilogue: The COVID-19 Pandemic: An Amplifier Case Study

COVID-19: More Than Just a Crisis

Extending the Framework of Risk Analysis

Manifest Uncertainties or the Increasing Evidence of the Illusion of Control

Safety as Part of a Broader Context

Appendix: Description of the Main Aviation Stakeholders

Index