One of the delusions of the idea of ‘drift into failure’ is that when things seem to be uneventful such is defined as success. Then when things go wrong somehow there has been a ‘drift into failure’.

What a strange notion of causation.

I recently read a supposed academic paper entitled ‘Organisational drift into failure: a case study of the 2010 Pike River Coal mine disaster’ that demonstrates the power of an idiom to create naivety in causation.

What this paper demonstrates is how one can take a mythical idea, idiom and belief and, attribute something to it. What this paper demonstrates is an unquestioned approach to an idea from Dekker that has no foundation. What has been done is, accept the premise of Dekker’s idiom without question and then make an event to fit its belief. Similarly, the paper has no understanding of Wickedity (the dynamic of Wicked Problems) or the delusions of accepted safety causality semiotics.

The paper also demonstrates how one can construct and event to meet the assumptions of one’s (undeclared) philosophy. The paper accepts many ideas and frameworks of safety without question as if somehow something can be learned from endorsing safety myth. This is what happens when Safety seeks answers to problems within its own cocoon and myopia as if somehow a truth has been affirmed or something has been learned.

The assumption of the reality of ‘drift’ finds a place it likes and determines ‘drift’ from that point. In this case the study goes back 3 years but as spoken wisely by Greg Smith on causation, does one go back to ‘let there be light’ (Root Cause: https://vimeo.com/16722871). Indeed, if one is looking to learn something from Pike River perhaps the Risky Conversations videos might be more helpful:

(also in free audiobook – https://www.humandymensions.com/product/risky-conversations-audio-book/)

What we see evidenced in this study is an unquestioned acceptance of the ideology and philosophy of Dekker. The acceptance of Dekker’s 5 steps, linear tunnel and discourse of ‘drift’ serve as distractions for thinking critically about cause. Indeed, all the 5 steps and tunnel do is endorse the biases of traditional safety causation. So much for ‘differently’.

What we hear in the word ‘drift’ is some kind of aimless, slow process of emergence, as-if the wisdom of hindsight bias make sense. The language of ‘drift’ only helps to affirm the continued arrogance of Safety, that adores wisdom in hindsight. There is no ‘drift’, there is no linear causation, there is no tunnel and no ‘differently’.

What happens in papers typical in safety such as this, is the promotion of an unquestioned idea to seek research in the ‘gospel of Dekker’. Indeed, when this is your starting point, all critical thinking stops. All that follows is an affirmation of an unquestioned assumption to make an event fit and, the affirmation of all the traditional assumptions of traditional safety.

If one accepted a philosophy of circularity, Wickedity, Transdisciplinarity, fallibility, ethical accountability and the semiotics of mythology, then nothing in this paper makes sense. There are other worldviews than the gospel of Dekker. There are other methodologies that make different sense of risk that are just as valid as traditional safety. There are better paradigms (https://safetyrisk.net/without-change-in-paradigm-there-will-be-no-sustainable-change-in-safety/) that make more sense of events, risk and error.

What this study shows is that traditional safety accepts the assumptions of traditional safety to prove the worldview of traditional safety. No wonder Safety remains fixed in its own culture and doesn’t move outside of its fortress.

If you are interested in a different view to traditional safety there is a positive alternative, that involves a positive paradigm shift. If you want to know more about this alternative:

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Or you can come to the SPoR Convention in September: https://spor.com.au/spor-convention-2025/