All three writers of the gospels use the metaphor of wineskins to make the point that you can’t put new ideas into an old framework. You can’t squeeze a supposed new methodology into old methods. Many metaphors like this were used in the gospels, such as putting a patch on old clothes and eventually the patch tears off.

When it comes to tackling risk, if you are looking for a new vision and practices, you won’t find them in the same worldview as has been practiced in the past.

When we did a literature review of texts in risk and safety on ethics (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-ethics-of-risk/) we found exactly this (pp. 25ff). Even books with titles like Quantum Safety were about the same old stuff presented with a new metaphor. We ended the chapter of the book The Ethics of Risk with a section called: Without Paradigm Change, No Sustainable Change in Safety. Even the text: Welch, S., (2000) A Feminist Ethic of Risk does a great analysis of the problem but poses no new methods.

I discussed this dilemma recently in Can Innovation Come From Within Safety?  (https://safetyrisk.net/can-innovation-come-from-within-safety/) that looked at the language that calls things ‘new’, ‘different’ and ‘innovative’, that is just traditional safety. It’s new wine in old wineskins. Eventually, the bubble bursts, the emperor is found to be naked and so on to the next fad. In the meantime, plenty of cash is to be made from the next trend and the lemmings that follow. This is a natural outcome of an industry fearful of critical thinking (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-critical-thinking-for-safety/).

When ‘compliance’, ‘systems’, ‘performance’ and ‘factors’ are the language, it’s more of trying to squeeze the thought of something new into the old. You can have all the wonderful aspirations and discourse one likes, but without praxis (https://safetyrisk.net/praxis-and-spor/), everything just falls back to the same paradigm with a few new slogans.

Argyris and Schon wrote about this years ago (https://www.academia.edu/79863555/Argyris_and_Schon_elements_of_their_models) on Espoused Theory and Theory-in-Use.

Unless a methodology is accompanied and merged with actionable methods, it remains Espoused Theory. Information and data are not action. Slogans are not methods.

There is also a tension between Espoused Theory and Theory-in-Use. There is no ‘fast and slow’ as Kahneman proposes. Learning is rarely instantaneous, change comes from slow movement towards real methods that at the time are not understood, appear threatening and scary. All learning requires a leap of faith into that dialectic.

I read a paper recently by Nektarios Karanikas and Haroun Zerguine: Are the new safety paradigms (only) about safety and sufficient to ensure it? (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753523003090) that does a wonderful job at analysing the problem. It looks at what they call ‘New Safety Paradigms’ (NSP).

I’m not sure I would call any of these supposed NSPs a ‘paradigm’ and certainly none of these fads and trends connect methodology to method or method to an ethic. However, it’s is an effective analysis nonetheless.

Whilst Safety gets excited once again about ‘organisational performance’ and ‘safety performance’ (first articulated fifty years ago) it eventually retreats back to more on measurement, metrics, systems, error management and a ‘re-imagining’ into old wineskins. We see the same excitement with the recent book on energy-based safety. An old idea regurgitated with a focus on the same old stuff that (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-is-about-persons-not-energies/) Viner discussed thirty-five years ago.

Just audit the language of these publications (using Critical Discourse Analysis) and it’s new wine into old wineskins. It’s still process safety with a few new slogans (not principles). The same for the associated podcasts, the agenda is the same, just look at what is talked about: performance, error management, measurement and systems.

Where is the innovation and change in practice? What are the new methods? Once you’ve got a few new slogans the question remains: ‘Now, what do I DO?’

If you are interested in exploring a new methodology with new methods to tackle risk, then this is what SPoR offers. The methods that emerge out of a very different worldview are positive, practical and effective. If you want to begin an exploration of SPoR, you can email here: admin@spor.com.au