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Abstract: The paper reviews the literature from 1986 on the management of those safety rules and procedures which relate to the workplace level in organisations. It contrasts two different paradigms of how rules and their development and use are perceived and managed. The first is a top-down classical, rational approach in which rules are seen as static, comprehensive limits of freedom of choice, imposed on operators at the sharp end and violations are seen as negative behaviour to be suppressed. The second is a bottom-up constructivist view of rules as dynamic, local, situated constructions of operators as experts, where competence is seen to a great extent as the ability to adapt rules to the diversity of reality. The paper explores the research underlying and illustrating these two paradigms, drawn from psychology, sociology and ethnography, organisational studies and behavioural economics. In a separate paper following on from this review (Hale and Borys, this issue) the authors propose a framework of rule management which attempts to draw the lessons from both paradigms. It places the monitoring and adaptation of rules central to its management process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The disasters of the past years in different high risk industries (e.g. aviation, offshore, nuclear) push for a moment of reflexivity about learning from accidents. In the aftermath of these events, one wonders whether learning from accidents remains a viable endeavour for companies and states or whether recurring technological disasters such as these seriously and definitely undermine any attempt to prove the feasibility of learning. Progress has certainly been made in the past, but apparently not enough so to be able to reach the highest safety levels, even in systems with dedicated resources. As a result of the current situation, some have been able to argue that ‘we don’t learn about disasters’. Although appealing and right, this is a very generic statement. There are many studies addressing aspects of learning from accidents which are in a position to bring insights about the drawbacks of learning. But this wealth of research is also part of the problem. When one wants to step back and to look broadly at the topic, to understand the reason why ‘we don’t learn’, one is left with a fragmented scientific literature covering a very large spectrum of interests and views on the subject. This paper tackles this problem by first designing a framework to organise the diversity of studies and second, by extracting four lessons on learning from accidents, putting together for this purpose works in psychology, sociology and political science. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]