ABSTRACT
For more than two decades, stakeholders in the safety field have promoted the idea of safety leadership. Researchers have investigated the personal traits or behaviours that are supposed to encourage it. Professional bodies have urged individuals to enact it or suggested ways in which it can be stimulated. Policymakers and accident investigators have demanded that organizations show more of it. This continued attention to safety leadership suggests both that it is important, and that it is difficult to achieve. In the final substantive chapter of this book, we will discuss the challenge of taking forward the findings reported by the other projects about the need to manage the context in which health and safety interventions are developed and delivered. This context has several dimensions, which have been explored in previous chapters: the legitimacy of intervention at the level of a whole society and its government; the flow of knowledge from researchers into organizations and networks; and the implementation of better practices in the routine performance of tasks in the workplace. Leadership cuts across all of these dimensions. While it is not essential that every health and safety professional operates at each level, it is essential that they understand the processes involved and their implications for the particular level where they are trying to have an impact.
