Exploring structure, agency and performance variability in everyday safety: An ethnographic study of practices around infusion devices using distributed cognition

Discussion and conclusionSafety is constructed through the co-evolution of sociotechnical structure and agency whereby structure shapes and influences people’s behaviour and people reproduce and create structures. Everyday performance variability emerges from these interactions, including deviations in processes and outcomes (e.g. incidents, near misses and opportunities). Studies of everyday safety can explore interactions between four points of a sociotechnical structuration model: structure, agency, and satisfactory and unsatisfactory performance.
Source: Safety Science - Category: Occupational Health Source Type: research