ABSTRACT
The safety-scientific approaches of a century have set a pattern. From an innovation that typically targets the system in which people work, almost every approach seems to end up reverting, one way or another, to the people who work in that system. Indeed, at the heart of this pattern is a dialectic—a constantly recurring discussion about the truth of either of two options. Should we look for safety improvements, risk management, and hazard containment in the system or in the person? In the organization or in the individual? In technology or in people? Upstream or downstream? Distal or proximal? Blunt end or sharp end? Do we fix work or do we fix the worker?
