Adapting Safety Rules in a High Reliability Context How Wildland Firefighting Workgroups Ventriloquize Safety Rules to Understand Hazards

• Published in: Management communication quarterly Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 362 - 389
• Main Author: Jahn, Jody L. S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.08.2016; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Compliance; Safety standards; Studies; Ventriloquism; safety rules; workgroups; high reliability organization; ventriloquism
• DOI: 10.1177/0893318915623638
• ISSN: 0893-3189

Safety rules are unavoidable in hazardous work and are often codified insights from accidents and fatalities. Safety rules research predominantly focuses on factors that influence compliance and violation of rules (a rationalist view), but rarely examines how members draw from safety rules to take action and gain experience. This study draws from and extends an adaptation view of safety rules, which considers how members use safety rules as “tools” to inform action. The study compares how two wildland firefighting workgroups incorporate safety rules into communication practices, and specifically, how they ventriloquize them. From a communication perspective, ventriloquization directs attention to ways safety rules enable members to make sense of hazards, navigate authority, and develop experience. The findings contribute an explanatory workgroup model for how members adapt safety rules into action according to workgroup norms, complementary relationships, and practices, which extends our understanding of adaptive action and learning in hazardous work organizations.