The Understanding and Management of Safety in Organizations

The course deals with safety management within different academic disciplines and positions in theories of science, which also includes the relationship between safety science and safety practices. The course includes a review of the foundations of safety science.The course encompasses theory on robust organisations seen from the perspectives of social sciences. The course elaborates the contents and relationships between NAT, HRO and resilience engineering. Another part of the course deals with safety management in organizations with emphasis on the relation between formal and informal parts of the organization. Safety culture is elaborated. Safety science and practice in the future is another central part. One part of the course consist of content and literature chosen by each student relevant to his/her PhD topic. The course is taught every second year, next time Fall 2026.

After completing the course, the student should be able to:

• explain the foundations of safety science
• explain approaches to safety and risk studies within different academic disciplines.
• explain different mechanisms in organizations to control hazards
• relate formal and informal parts of the safety efforts in an organization to each other
• categorize and explain different organizational perspectives on robust organizations
• assess established truths, beliefs and "schools" in safety and risk research.
• describe future trends of safety science and practices

The syllabus consists of colloquiums between students and the course teacher, and writing a term-paper which requires use of the study literature on specific research questions.