OE Fatality Prevention at an Organisational Level

Abstract

This chapter approaches outdoor education fatality prevention at organisational levels from a case-based perspective. Not all investigations into outdoor education fatal incidents extend to organisational considerations, but inferences can be drawn about what organisations would have to do to prevent future deaths. Some investigated incidents have been linked to deployment of staff with insufficient expertise or lack of fatality prevention knowledge. In some cases organisational practices or priorities have actively weakened or constrained fatality prevention. Although not all outdoor education programs or activities require organisational involvement, and only some have involved organisational complexity, past incidents have revealed different ways in which organisational arrangements or practices could affect fatality prevention for better or worse. Some incidents have revealed tensions between safety premised on expert judgment in the field and procedural approaches derived from industrial safety. Outdoor education fatality prevention in organisations is potentially subject to production pressure, as fatality prevention must compete with organisational goals for time, effort, and funds. The chapter selectively reviews research on industrial and organisational safety relevant to outdoor education, in particular considering tensions between management imperatives and established safety knowledge. It critically examines the contribution of structuralist “systems thinking” accident analysis to fatality prevention. It considers the applicability of risk management, Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and risk matrices, which have been widely adopted in practice but extensively criticised in the research literature.