You can have your cake and eat it too: Embracing paradox of safety as source of progress in safety science

Safety is typically cast as a trade-off with other priorities, such as production and efficiency. Such an approach sets up dramatic tension between organisational goals—an ‘either-or’ situation. Alternatively, safety can be framed as something that can be achieved simultaneously with other goals—a ‘both-and’ situation. The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of the paradoxical nature of safety and to explore how paradoxical insights might...