ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs a perspective on safety that makes sense vis-à-vis the world that one have to deal with now and in the near future, by reversing the process of deconstruction, called 'Safety–II'. The ontology of Safety–II is consistent with the fact that many socio-technical systems have become so complicated that work situations are always underspecified, hence partially unpredictable. Because most socio-technical systems are intractable, work conditions will nearly always differ from what has been specified or prescribed. This means that little, if anything, can be done unless work, tasks and tools, are adjusted so that they correspond to the situation. The ontology of Safety–II is thus that human performance, individually or collectively, always is variable. Emergent outcomes can be understood as arising from unexpected, and unintended combinations of performance variability where the governing principle is resonance rather than causality.
