1,720,965 research outputs found
Critical reflection on the SIA’s professional project and the body of knowledge
No full textOver the last few years the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) has developed and implemented a number of strategies to gain professional status for the ‘generalist occupational health and safety professional’. Two of the most significant developments have been the publication of the ‘Core Body of Knowledge for the Generalist OHS Professional.’ and the accreditation of university OHS courses. \ud
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Despite a considerable amount of work aimed at gaining professional status there has not been any public debate or reflection about how the professionalisation project may impact on OHS and how the project is being conducted. Professionalisation has been vigorously promoted as a sign of maturity for the SIA and which will provide unmitigated benefits for workplace health and safety. \ud
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The aim of this paper is to critically reflect on the processes of professionalisation (the professional project) and discuss some of the ways in which this project may shape the field of occupational health and safety. The implications for the role of universities will also be discussed
A critical assessment of the Australian OHS accreditation system's "Body of Knowledge (BoK)"
No full textIn response to an increasing perception of poor OHS consultancy quality amongst the Australian public, regulator and OHS professionals, the Safety Institute Australia (SIA) was tasked by the Victorian government to establish an accreditation process for OHS professionals. The OHS accreditation board decided to base its accreditation on a core "body of knowledge" (BoK), against which applicants are assesssed. While the foundation and structure of the BoK is unclear, the BoK consists of a collection of essays from a variety of invited authors. The BoK comprises about 811 pages in 34 chapters, with significant redundancy and considerable subjective components.\ud
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The SIA BoK is benchmarked against two international best-practices, the German "Core Definition, Object Catalog and Research Domains of Labour Science (Ergonomics)" (Luzcak, Volpert, Raeithel & Schwier, 1989)(100 pages) and the American "Core Competency Model" for the "Master's Degree in Public Health" (Association of Schools of Public Health, 2006) (21 pages). Both "core definition" and "core competency model" are on a comparative level to the BoK.\ud
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While the German expert panel consisted of 14 eminent professors, the American panel consisted of 135 members, organized in 6 groups chaired by discipline leading academics. The Australian approach employed a broad approach, where 137 professionals, consultants, emerging academics and academics contributed to 8 workshops. Both the German and the American panels maintained an open communication amongst members and with the discipline community throughout the process, whereas SIA applied an open and directed peer-review process.\ud
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Moreover, the German process involved an analysis of all congress content and journal publications in the scientific domain in a set timeframe, which were then systematically clustered. These results were further expanded by structured interviews with 38 professors in the discpline, grasping their research and teaching practice. The American workgroup however assumed core scientific areas, underlying the domain. Based upon the a-priori assumption, they then established well defined competencies across all areas using a modified Delphi process. Although the BoK attempts to explore the knowledge in the OHS domain without an imposed structure in a bottom-up approach, it does not result in a structured systematic of the science.\ud
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We conclude that the outcome of the German, rigorous academic approach, and the US American democratic approach under unambiguous academic leadership both outperform the Australian advocacy group approach. This product was determined for both structure and content of the taxonomy delivered through the processes. \u
Supplemental materials to: Workforce perceptions of human factors as leading indicators of plant reliability and process safety
No full textHuman factors, as perceived by the maintenance workforce, were used as the measure for comparing work areas within a petroleum company. These factors were then compared to an objective measure of reliability (Mean Time Between Failures) in order to determine which factors would be most predictive of plant reliability and process safety.
Maintenance personnel were surveyed using scales based on Problem-solving, Vigilance, Design and maintenance, Job-related feedback and Information about change. Analysis of Variance was used to assess the strength of these variables in relation to Reliability Level.
Significant differences were observed between different reliability levels based on workforce perceptions of problem-solving requirements and the design and maintainability of plant. Conclusions were that perceptions of human factors in the workplace can be predictive of group-level performance, and that if issues relating to design and maintainability are not addressed at the design stage, greater problem-solving abilities will be required from maintenance personnel.Supplementary materials for: Antonovsky, A., Straker, L., & Pollock, C. (2020). Workforce perceptions of human factors as indicators of plant reliability and process safety. Ergonomics, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2020.1823489Support for this research was provided by the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance under R2D3 Aliance Framework Agreement 0C00002634.Maintenance Workplace Questionnaire (A3 format)peerReviewedpublishedVersio
Beyond violations: A deeper understanding of why maintenance proceedures are not followed
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Dataset for: Workforce perceptions of human factors as leading indicators of plant reliability and process safety
No full textHuman factors, as perceived by the maintenance workforce, were used as the measure for comparing work areas within a petroleum company. These factors were then compared to an objective measure of reliability (Mean Time Between Failures) in order to determine which factors would be most predictive of plant reliability and process safety.
Maintenance personnel were surveyed using scales based on Problem-solving, Vigilance, Design and maintenance, Job-related feedback and Information about change. Analysis of Variance was used to assess the strength of these variables in relation to Reliability Level.
Significant differences were observed between different reliability levels based on workforce perceptions of problem-solving requirements and the design and maintainability of plant. Conclusions were that perceptions of human factors in the workplace can be predictive of group-level performance, and that if issues relating to design and maintainability are not addressed at the design stage, greater problem-solving abilities will be required from maintenance personnel.Dataset for: Antonovsky, A., Straker, L., & Pollock, C. (2020). Workforce perceptions of human factors as indicators of plant reliability and process safety. Ergonomics, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2020.1823489Support for this research was provided by the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance under R2D3 Aliance Framework Agreement 0C00002634.reviewe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Relationship Between Human Factors and Plant Maintenance Reliability in a Petroleum Processing Organisation
No full textThe results of three studies support past research demonstrating that problem-solving skills and the design of socio-technical facilities have an important influence on organisational performance. The findings further extend research in the field of human factors by demonstrating a significant relationship between these two factors and group-level performance. The findings also demonstrated the importance of organisational communication, but as an organisational-level dimension that might not influence group-level measures. This research has implications for organisations that operate complex, hazardous technologies and that are attempting to improve organisational processes by utilising a human factors approach
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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