Description

Built to Blame challenges one of the biggest assumptions in workplace safety: that the people responsible for improving safety actually possess the authority to make the decisions that matter.

Across mining, construction, manufacturing, transport, healthcare and government, safety professionals are expected to prevent harm while operating without the budget, operational control or executive authority needed to eliminate many of the risks they identify. When something goes wrong, investigations often focus not on the decisions that created the conditions for failure, but on the people who warned about them.

Drawing on more than twenty five years of experience, extensive interviews with safety practitioners, regulators, psychologists, forensic engineers and organisational leaders, Tom Bourne explores how modern organisations unintentionally create structures that reward plausible deniability and transfer accountability downward.

Rather than offering another book about compliance or culture, Built to Blame examines:

• Why safety roles are structurally vulnerable
• The authority gap between responsibility and control
• How investigations can become mechanisms of blame
• The psychology of hindsight bias and scapegoating
• Moral injury experienced by safety professionals
• Why documentation often protects organisations more than practitioners
• How to recognise unhealthy organisations before accepting a role
• Practical strategies for protecting your career while improving organisational safety

This is an essential resource for safety professionals, frontline leaders, executives, regulators and anyone responsible for building organisations that genuinely learn rather than simply assign blame.