ABSTRACT
198This book has established that restorative just culture is ‘a culture of trust, learning and forward-looking accountability' (Dekker, 2017) and is presented as an alternative to a traditional (retributive) just culture, ‘where behaviours of carefully selected and trained individuals and working under supervision is unfortunately compared by analogy to behaviours of criminals intending to cause harm' (Bitar, Chadwick-Jones, Nazaruk & Boodhai, 2018, p. 281). A restorative just culture aims to achieve moral engagement of all stakeholders, reintegration of the caregivers into their community of practice, emotional healing of those affected by an incident, and organisational learning and improvement (Dekker, n.d.). Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are clear economic benefits to applying a restorative just culture. For instance, De Boer (2021, p. 16–17) reports how a restorative approach towards a road worker that ‘illegally and seemingly frivolously' had crossed a multi-lane freeway amidst oncoming traffic enabled the identification of malfunctions deep in the system that would have remained hidden if a more traditional approach had been adopted.
