Trond Kongsvik

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | NTNU · Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management

The Nordic working life model (NWLM) promotes ‘good work’ on societal and workplace levels. However, this model is now challenged by emerging business models in the platform economy. This study investigates how digital labor platforms respond to conflicting institutional logics and how platform-mediated work intervenes with the inherent logic of th...

In this qualitative study, we explore the concept of trust in safety-critical automated shipboard systems and how it relates to the professional identity of seafarers. For maritime safety, it is critical that human–automation interaction builds on appropriate trust in an automated system. Although there is momentum in researching trust in automatio...

In 2015, a new risk definition was presented by the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA-N) as a petroleum regulation update and ‘rolled out’ in the PSA-N organisation and the oil and gas industry as a regulatory guideline, changing the definition of risk from ‘the combination of probabilities and consequences’ to ‘the consequences of an activ...

In 2015, the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority introduced a new definition of risk, formulated as `... the consequences of activities with associated uncertainty.' This paper explores how the new definition is understood in the industry and possible changes in risk management the change has led to in the Norwegian petroleum industry. Semi-struct...

Platform-mediated work (PMW) is an emerging way of organizing work, potentially challenging a sustainable working life. Still, PMW is relatively underexplored within safety science research. This comparative study examines two radically different platforms – food delivery and ICT-related consulting – to identify features of platform-mediated work t...

Framework conditions are important for safety, as they affect the possibilities for keeping risk under control. In this literature study, which is a follow-up of a similar study from 2011 (Rosness et al., 2011), 119 articles were reviewed to identify emerging framework conditions and their relation to safety in the petroleum industry. Changes in ex...

The platform economy’s emergence challenges the current labor regulations hinged upon the binary employer–employee relations established during the industrial age. While this burgeoning phenomenon presents several possibilities for workers, customers, and businesses alike, scholars from various fields have sounded alarms regarding pitfalls in platf...

Organizational fragmentation presents a challenge to prominent safety perspectives hinged upon the traditional concept of the organization. The continuing disjunction in the workplace has reached new heights in the recent phenomenon of platform-mediated work (PMW), where workers engage in on-demand labor mediated by platforms. In this paper, the ex...

Vi vet lite om hvordan arbeidslivet ser ut om 30 år. Likevel er det en del utviklingstrekk som har gjort seg gjeldende de senere årene og som det kan være grunn til å tro vil forsterke seg i årene framover. Overordnet handler dette blant annet om en økende globalisering, automatisering og autonome systemer og nye måter å organisere arbeid og verdik...

Vi vet lite om hvordan arbeidslivet ser ut om 30 år. Likevel er det en del utviklingstrekk som har gjort seg gjeldende de senere årene og som det kan være grunn til å tro vil forsterke seg i årene framover. Overordnet handler dette blant annet om en økende globalisering, automatisering og autonome systemer og nye måter å organisere arbeid og verdik...

Vi vet lite om hvordan arbeidslivet ser ut om 30 år. Likevel er det en del utviklingstrekk som har gjort seg gjeldende de senere årene og som det kan være grunn til å tro vil forsterke seg i årene framover. Overordnet handler dette blant annet om en økende globalisering, automatisering og autonome systemer og nye måter å organisere arbeid og verdik...

There are several recent examples of major accidents involving naval ships. The starting point for this article is the collision between the frigate ‘Helge Ingstad’ and the oil tanker ‘Sola TS’. An investigation highlighted systemic weaknesses in the Norwegian navy related to safety competence safety management, and handling of goal conflicts. By m...

A Dynamic Positioning (DP) system enables vessels and rigs to accurately maintain a predetermined position and heading or track. It enables precise operations under harsh environmental conditions. DP is used for a variety of purposes; however, the role of the DP operator (DPO) is considered the same regardless of type of operation: to monitor and k...

Mindful safety practices (MSP) can be regarded as a positive safety behaviour. Building on the perspective of high reliability organizations, MSP involves being aware of safety critical factors in the environment and acting appropriately when signals of danger arise. As segments of working life are becoming increasingly underspecified and cannot be...

Contingent work through digital platforms is growing. This paper provides a media coverage analysis of this kind of work, also known under several monikers such as the gig economy, the sharing economy, platform economy, collaborative consumption, and on-demand economy. We analyzed 160 news articles from various online and print news media from 2014...

Over the past decades, government safety management regulation has been driven by deregulation, simplification and organization-level regimes of inspection. So-called functional rule-making requires organizations to implement safety management systems appropriate for their operations. The paradox that seems to have arisen is that overregulation is...

Background Safety management is required to ensure health and safety of personnel in Norwegian fish farming. However, few studies have addressed the status and practical relevance of this risk-reducing measure. Methods This article provides new knowledge through interviews with 35 employees at different company levels, addressing perceptions of va...

Seamanship has been associated with certain individual skills and special knowledge related to navigation, operation and safety of sea-going vessels, but also to expected work ethics and obligations to fellow seamen. The term is also used in international shipping regulations, including the ability to make sound judgements. This paper explores how...

Background Aquaculture workers are exposed to several workplace hazards. Norwegian fish farming has a high occupational injury rate. This article provides new knowledge about workers' perceptions of their health and work environment. Methods The study is based on data collected in a telephone survey with 447 participants and 35 qualitative intervi...

Few studies have explored the potential connection between safety climate and health issues. However, some recent research findings indicate that a poor safety climate can be considered a stressor that may be associated with physical symptoms and musculoskeletal complaints. This link is further explored in the present study on the basis of a questi...

The article explores how simulator-based training of professional maritime deck officers can improve the management of performance variability and safety during critical operations at sea. The research has a qualitative design and is based on observational data from two different training programmes and interviews with simulator instructors and exp...

Objectives: In Norwegian aquaculture, safer technology and better safety management systems have been developed during the last decade. Safety commitment and safe behavior are still vital to ensure a safe working environment. The objective of this paper is to explore what factors might influence the reporting of hazardous situations in aquaculture....

Background: Recent decades have seen increased attention to patient safety in health care. This is often in the form of programmes aiming to change professional behaviours. Health professionals in hospitals have traditionally resented such initiatives because patient safety programmes often take a managerialist form that may be interpreted as a ch...

The book covers formal and informal aspects of safety management in working life, including a historical overview in a Norwegian context, and possible future challenges.

The study is based on a literature review of recent empirical research on crew resource management (CRM) training in the maritime industry, organised around what non-technical skills to learn and how. The review indicates that existing work is dominated by individualistic theories of learning with less focus on learning as a social process. Five ma...

The aquaculture industry is economically important in Norway, and the production is expected to increase in the future. Employees at the fish farms face a high risk of accidents compared to employees in other industries and the focus on safety from both industry and researchers has increased during the last decade. Adding to the knowledge on safety...

Globally, there are more than six times more fatalities caused by a poor working environment than due to occupational accidents. In this paper we compare the basic strategies involved in accident and disease prevention. We find that the basic thinking is the same. The preventive strategies involve control of hazards in a hierarchy from elimination...

Introduction The existence of a positive association between safety climate and the safety behavior of sharp-end workers in high-risk organizations is supported by a considerable body of research. Previous research has primarily analyzed two components of safety behavior, namely safety compliance and safety participation. The present study extends...

In this article we explore the phenomenon of airmanship in commercial passenger flights, in a context of increasing standardisation of procedures and technologies. Through observation studies in cockpits and interviews we have studied pilots' practices and how they relate to the larger system of procedures and the technical environment. We find tha...

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Background Patient safety has gained less attention in primary care in comparison to specialised care. We explore how local medical centres (LMCs) can play a role in strengthening patient safety, both locally and in transitions between care levels. LMCs represent a form of intermediate care organisation in Norway that is increasingly used as a stra...

Background: Patient safety has gained less attention in primary care in comparison to specialised care. We explore how local medical centres (LMCs) can play a role in strengthening patient safety, both locally and in transitions between care levels. LMCs represent a form of intermediate care organisation in Norway that is increasingly used as a str...

How vessel crews perceive safety on board (shipboard safety) is a useful indication for the general safety level. In this study a theoretical model was explored, involving factors that could possibly influence shipboard safety. Based on a survey questionnaire (n = 244), safety climate, shipowner efficiency demands and regulatory activities were inv...

Safety management regulation is an important supplement to market forces to establish a sufficient safety level in high-risk industries. The accident statistics in Norwegian maritime passenger transportation display a paradox: personal injuries have decreased while ship accidents have increased in the period during which safety management has been...

Measuring safety climate has been an established activity within the community of safety research. This has been accompanied by various discussions about the concept validity and what safety climate is actually measuring. In spite of the lack of consensus regarding what is actually measured, it has become a relatively common practice in some indust...

Encouraging a sound Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) culture is a regulatory requirement for petroleum companies operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Although regulators in different industries have increasingly included safety culture in their regulatory repertory, it is still rare that regulators explicitly require sound cultures....

Decision making is a central component in the management of safety-critical operations. Some attempts have been made to employ Quantitative Risk Analysis as input to such decisions. Although adequate for long-term planning where the average risk is the relevant parameter, such systems tend to fall short in operational and instantaneous decisions wh...

This paper argues that a participatory approach directly involving employees in safety barrier analysis can provide ‘added value’ to traditional barrier analyses. Employee participation (EP) could motivate employees to use their knowledge, suggest improvement measures and express their concerns. EP has not received much attention from safety resear...

Procedure violations are commonly identified as an essential causal factor in maritime accidents. This also applies to the Norwegian offshore service vessel sector. This illustrates that there is a need to study compliance and non-compliance in a broad context and to explore the factors that affect the propensity to act in accordance with prevailin...

This paper presents and discusses a pilot study named Operational Conditions in Control Rom Organisations (OCCO). The main goal of the study was to develop and test a qualitative safety improvement approach intended to supplement quantitative approaches applied for safety management in the space domain. The historical and current practice in the Eu...

The aim of this paper is to explore the implementation of the ISM code and the possible relations to safety culture. The ISM code is designed to create a safety oriented culture in the industry through the establisment of Safety Management Systems (SMSs). The empirical basis is a broad qualitative interview study in a Norwegian context, which invol...

Investigations of major accidents show that technical, human, operational, as well as organizational factors influence the accident sequences. In spite of these facts, quantitative risk analyses of offshore oil and gas production platforms have focused on technical safety systems. This paper describes an effort to develop further the quantitative r...

Hydrocarbon (HC) leaks are important initiating events for major accidents in the oil and gas industry. This study explores the extent to which a safety climate indicator from a survey on working conditions undertaken in an oil and gas company (n = 2188) can be used as a leading and/or lagging indicator in relation to HC leaks on 28 offshore instal...

This article discusses the extent to which indicators can represent organisational qualities in relation to safety and how a qualitative approach called the Operational Safety Condition (OSC) method can be a supplement and help improve safety. In light of the recent Safety Science debate on safety indicators, we suggest that it is difficult to capt...

The objective of this paper is to present and discuss the OTS-method. OTS is a proactive method for monitoring the status of operational safety barriers influencing the risk of major accidents on oil and/or gas handling offshore and onshore facilities. An OTS-verification is a systematic and independent assessment of the status of the operational s...

This paper demonstrates how the resilience concept (Hollnagel et al., 2006) can be used as a perspective for reducing occupational injuries. The empirical background for the paper is a case study on an oil and gas installation in the North Sea that had a negative trend in LTI (Lost Time Injury) rates. The HSE (Health, Safety, Environment) administr...

Most companies involved in hazardous operations are required to have some sort of safety management system. The most frequently used approaches to safety management are largely bureaucratic ones, which rely heavily on top-down perspectives on organizations, and on extensive systems of rules and regulations. We argue that these approaches can lead o...

Our main purpose with this study was to explain why personnel on service vessels in the North Sea have been more accident prone than other personnel groups in the Norwegian oil industry