Decision Making for Ensuring Occupational Safety

It is quite difficult to generalize decision-making methods in the field of occupational safety, since the problems relating to occupational safety, their nature, and the decisions taken change substantially as an enterprise develops. The life cycle of an enterprise, from its creation to its closure, can be divided into six main stages: design, construction, commissioning, operation, maintenance and modification, and decommissioning and demolition.

At each stage of the life cycle, decisions relating to occupational safety are made that are not only specific to that particular stage of development but also affect some or all of the other stages of development. Decisions in the field of occupational safety also differ in nature depending on the organizational level at which they are made. G. Hale (1994) distinguishes three levels of decisions regarding compliance with occupational safety rules and standards at an enterprise:

• 1. The executive level, at which workers' actions directly influence the emergence of hazards and control over them. This level involves recognizing hazards and selecting measures to eliminate them. The degree of freedom in decision-making here is limited; consequently, feedback and corrective cycles are mainly concerned with correcting deviations from established procedures and bringing established practice back to the norm. As soon as a situation is identified in which a previously agreed norm is no longer considered valid, the next levels of decision-making are brought into play.
• 2. The level of planning, organization, and procedures involves developing and formalizing actions at the executive level in anticipation of predicted hazards. The planning and organization level establishes areas of responsibility, procedures, and reporting arrangements, and is usually described in occupational safety manuals. At this level, abstract principles are turned into concrete tasks and procedures, combined with a cycle aimed at quality improvement that is necessary in many management systems.
• 3. At the level of structure and management, general principles for managing occupational safety are developed, the "normal" functioning of the occupational safety system is critically monitored, and the system is continuously improved and maintained as it encounters changes in the external environment.

Hale emphasizes that the three levels discussed are abstract concepts corresponding to three different kinds of feedback. They should not be regarded as an analogue of a hierarchical chain: workers — shop floor — senior management, since the activity characteristic of each abstract level is carried out in different ways. The way tasks are distributed reflects the level of culture and working methods of each company. Occupational safety problems are solved through a process of problem-solving and decision-making. According to Hale, this process, based on the problem-solving cycle, has much in common with the three levels of occupational safety management described above. The problem-solving cycle is a model of an idealized procedure broken down into steps, intended for analyzing and making decisions on safety problems triggered by potential or current deviations from desired, anticipated, or planned levels of safety (Diagram 4).

The way problems are framed is directly related to the quality of the solutions expected to be found. A change in how a problem is framed entails an entirely new approach to solving it. One example of a shift in the field of occupational safety science in recent years is a move in focus from elements of production operations toward organizational decisions and working conditions, which contributes to creating a coherent work situation.

Occupational safety management encompasses a wide range of diverse problems, the solution of each of which depends on factors such as the life cycle, the organizational level, the phase of the problem-solving process, or the level of severity that needs to be reduced. In this sense, developing decisions relating to occupational safety is just as complex

Diagram 4. The cycle of the problem-solving process

a process, as is the development of decisions related to other management problems.