Incident-reporting schemes can prevent accidents through organisational learning from incidents. However, many occupational health and safety incidents go unreported. Fieldwork was undertaken to investigate the low level of reporting among railway maintenance technicians in Sweden and the role played by informal storytelling within their occupational communities. The study found that the incident-reporting scheme is not integrated in technicians’ practices and cultural frame and does not seem to serve their interests. Storytelling, however, is an integral part of technicians’ practices and their accident aetiology and creates a way for them to address risks, at least from a narrow perspective
Incident Reporting or Storytelling? Competing Schemes in a Safety-Critical and Hazardous Work Setting (paper)
