What is the reason for HOP’s popularity? (part 1)

The other day, some friends and I had a cup of coffee after work with some loose discussions and reflections about the state of the safety profession. One of the topics that popped up, and in fact initially triggered our little get-together, was the question of why HOP suddenly seems to be “hot”.

HOP = HOT?

Of course, “hotness” is a difficult thing to assess. It will be hard to quantify this in any sensible way – for example because our social media feeds and Google searches are biased. So, while it may seem that I see more HOP than usual, that may be just my clicking behaviour or personal preferences. However, let me offer at least some things that indicate a breakthrough to the safety mainstream. First, there is the 2023 HOP Summit. This is organised by the National Safety Council, commonly seen as a landmark of traditional safety. Even more, the summit is sponsored by oil giant Exxon Mobil and agriculture and bioindustry multinational Cargill.

Second, these major firms are not the only ones to support HOP. Norwegian energy company Equinor has incorporated HOP into their ways of managing safety. Following that example, Norsk Industri, the federation of Norwegian industries has made a major effort in disseminating HOP as a new and/or additional way of improving safety to their members – around 3.000 companies with 133.000 employees (which is a lot for a rather small country as Norway). I have seen that similar guidance is in the making elsewhere, e.g., from the Energy Institute.

We haven’t seen any of these major supports for HOP before, even though HOP has been around for at least a decade (judging this somewhat lazily with a reference to Conklin’s first Pre-Accident Investigations book, although that is certainly not the start of HOP). So, why the sudden interest? I think this question provides a great opportunity to play around a bit with some ideas and digest some of the material I have worked with lately during my PhD-readings. For the first attempt, we turn to a fascinating body of work within management theory: guru theory.

Four explanations

A great place (one of many, in fact) to start exploring the literature on guru theory is a 2001 book by Brad Jackson, Management Gurus and Management Fashions. Based on the work of Grint (1997), Jackson discusses four different approaches to explain management fashion phenomena. We can regard HOP as one of several fashions (if you find “fashion” a negative term, feel free to replace it with “concept” or “approach”) within safety, competing for our attention. He does so by characterising the different explanations by looking at the main emphasis of their explanatory power.

Drawn as a two-by-two matrix (these are popular indeed), on the vertical axis we ask whether the main emphasis of the explanatory account lies with the logic of the approach or with its emotional qualities. The horizontal axis asks us whether the approach is internalist, focusing on the individual, or externalist, focusing on forces outside the individual, for example in the surrounding structure.

This gives us four possible approaches (rational, structural, institutional, and charismatic) to explain the popularity of a certain approach – of course within limitations, because we do not have the time or opportunity to collect a lot of actual data. Still, it is useful as a thought experiment and for discussion.

Rational

According to the rational explanation, the main reason for a certain concept to be adopted is that it works. Organisations want to improve their results. They must compete with other organisations. To be successful, they need to adopt the best approaches available and new ones when they seem to give benefits.

We find traces of this in HOP. For example, when we hear about “plateauing safety results” and that we need other/new approaches to further improve. Or, when there is talk about the world having become complex, volatile, and uncertain, such that traditional (often labelled as “linear”) approaches are not sufficient anymore. Also, HOP stresses the aspect of learning which is something that many organisations desire to better cope with challenges.

Structural

The structural explanation emphasises the importance of the socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts within which management theories and ideas emerge and become widely adopted. Jackson explains that “the success of a new idea or theory is determined, in large part, by how well it meshes with the material needs of managers and their organizations at a particular point in time and the prevailing political environment, cultural norms and expectations” (p.24). The structural explanation sees adoption of certain concepts as processes in which management change their control mechanisms in an adaption to structural circumstances.

One might turn to socioeconomic and political contexts to assess the applicability of this approach. It would require some serious study, something we are not going to do right now. However, one might suggest that HOP resonates well with other concepts that are quite popular now, like “agile” and “psychological safety”. This might perhaps suggest some presence of a cultural context. Also, HOP’s focus on learning matches well with that of “psychological safety”. When HOP is included in the training of safety professionals, perhaps we also could speak of a structural factor.

Institutional

The institutional explanation draws on another fascinating body of theory dealing with forces and processes inside and outside of organisations that influence institutionalization. One of these forces is that people (like managers of organisations) look at others for what to do, especially under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. What one sees then is the so-called “bandwagon effect”. People copy the behaviour of others because that seems the right thing to do. People do not want to be seen as lagging behind, and they may perceive “competitive pressure”. If other organisations adopt an approach, so should your organisation, else you stay behind the competition.

Again, we do not have proper data to really assess this. However, we see the increasing adoption of HOP by various organisations as illustrated by the examples mention at the beginning of this blog. Also, the number of HOP-ish books and (learning team) workshops seems to be increasing by the month.

Charismatic

When we explain adoption of a concept from the charismatic angle, then we often look at the importance of the influence of certain persons. Here we are entering the area of guru theory. Gurus are the ones communicating a certain message and are followed not just because of the contents of their message, but (also) because of their rhetoric power, performance, and charisma. By packaging and delivering their message in smart ways, gurus appeal to their audience which sees in the message a solution to their problems.

Guru status may be hard to assess in safety. Safety books do most likely not appear in the New York Times bestseller lists, and safety speakers typically do not sell out events on a Tony Robbins scale. However, within the safety community we can definitely point out some potential gurus (for example Dekker and Conklin) who also fit the “rhetoric”, “performance” and “charisma” tags, as well as being affiliated with HOP.

Summing up

All four explanatory approaches discussed above can help us to understand to some degree the rising popularity of a concept in safety such as HOP. None of these explanations does stand alone. Often, they go together and overlap – as we for example can see in the closeness of the structural and institutional approaches. And, as Jackson says, all four explanatory approaches bring their own value to the table:

·??????The rational explanation emphasizes that safety concepts are intended to improve safety. While not everything that is perceived as useful in fact is useful, managers and professionals follow fashions in the belief that it will.

·??????The structural explanation looks at the wider sociopolitical and cultural context in which things happen. After all, context matters!

·??????Looking from the institutional perspective shines a light on processes and the role of various agents and their institutional relationships, causing a variety of pressures on people and organisations.

·??????Finally, the charismatic explanation puts some leading figures in the spotlight and how rhetoric and performance may help to spread something in addition to its contents, and sometimes despite the substance of the message.

While I see some truth in the rational perspective, I find the last two the most fascinating and I think they hold some major explanatory power. More about that in a follow-up.

References

Conklin, T. (2012) Pre-Accident Investigations: An Introduction to Organizational Safety. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Grint, K. (1997) Fuzzy Management: Contemporary Ideas and Practices at Work, London: Oxford University Press

Jackson, B. (2001) Management Gurus and Management Fashion. A Dramatistic Inquiry. London: Routledge.

In case you want to read some things that have shaped my interest in adoption of safety concepts, (e.g. culture, or various myths within the realm of safety), please check my books:

https://mindtherisk.com/publications/227-the-first-rule-of-safety-culture

https://www.mindtherisk.com/2-uncategorised/204-the-book-if-you-can-t-measure-it-maybe-you-shouldn-t

https://mindtherisk.com/2-uncategorised/205-safety-myth-101