Thoughts on safety responsibilities of management

• Authors: Felix Redmill
• Venue: SCS '07 Proceedings of the twelfth Australian workshop on Safety critical systems and software and safety-related programmable systems - Volume 86
• Year: 2007

System safety depends not only on 'operators' but also on management at all hierarchical levels. Rules are made at each level, and these define objectives for, and place constraints on, all lower levels. Moreover, at each level, the rules made at higher levels must be interpreted and translated into other forms. This paper examines four concerns in the responsibilities of management for safety: the problems that occur in the transmission of objectives and constraints, the need for wisdom in the interpretation and management of rules, safety considerations in the governance of organisations, and the need for safety self-awareness in management.