Live or Let Die: Managing Safety Management System Strategies and Stakeholders by Jon Kevin Loebbaka and Alfred Lewis

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE

        The article "Live or let die: managing safety management system strategies and stakeholders " by Jon Kevin Loebbaka and Alfred Lewis, appears ina book in the Business Strategy Series.  The article states that the financial and social cost of an organization’s safety performance has reported a greater significance to the integration of its safety management system (SMS) into the firm’s overall strategic drive.

Although the arrangement and change of SMS strategies from the executive group to the work has become a serious factor of a firm’s strategic pursuits.  The authors believe that the possibility of this safety problem is embodied in management’s proper identification of successful SMS strategies.  According to the authors, there are three stages of SMS strategy processes that can create, change, and form upon the organization’s workplace safety performance.  The SMS processes are making sense of the firm’s safety environment, the identification of safety issues and the decision making resulting in actions.The authors cite examples in order to prove the stages of SMS strategy processes.

The authors then offerrecommendations for managers and safety professionals that offers a new perspective from which to recognize, understand and accomplish organizational safety performances.  This includes several management characteristics that assumes to be critical in creating a high performance Safety Management Systems (SMSs).

CRITIQUE OF THE ARTICLE

        The article "Live or let die: managing safety management system strategies and stakeholders " by Jon Kevin Loebbaka and Alfred Lewis, appears in a book in the Business Strategy Seriesseeks to address how the three stages of SMS strategy processes have the ability to create, change, and form upon the organization’s workplace safety performance.  The research problem being addressed is whether the authors can prove that the possibility of safety problems in an organization is embodied in management’s proper identification of successful SMS strategies.  

It is clear from the abstract of the article that this is no simple issue.  In fact, the article is fairly confusing for the first couple paragraphs.  The author starts by saying that SMSs have been shaped by three major stakeholders in the USA.  In my opinion, it is not necessary for the author to give detailed explanation about any other additional information that is not relevant towards the topic that needs to be discussed.

Another influence is that the authors keep on repeating phrases in a certain paragraph. Jon Kevin Loebbaka and Alfred Lewis writes “The scope of this safety problem is embodied in management’s proper identification of successful SMS strategies, integration of those strategies within the firm’s overall strategic thrust, and allocation of the firm’s limited resources.”  The exact phrase has been repeated on the second line of the third paragraph.  They did not paraphrase the points that have been stated in the first paragraph of the introduction of the article, at which the mistake they did is unprofessional.  

On the other hand, to such a complicated issue, the author sums the research up well by addressing three stages of SMS strategy processes        . The authors cite examples in order to prove the stages of SMS strategy processes can create, change, and form upon the workplace safety performance of an organization.  At the first SMS strategy step, the safety environment sense making process builds a set of shared senses or meanings and purposes in understanding the organization’s safety environment (Choo, 2002; Loebbaka, 2008). This is result from current and future regulations, industry standards, workplace injuries, fatalities, and changes in workers’ compensation costs. The second SMS strategy step involves the identification of safety issues.  Grant (2002) indicates that this stage influences the firm’s safety knowledge to produce new capabilities.  The point stated by Jon Kevin Loebbaka and Alfred Lewis is proven to be true because other author also supports it.  As for the final SMS strategy which is the decision making resulting in actions.  The authors stresses that this step affects the firm’s finances, influences stakeholders’ views of the firm, and boosts competitive advantage.  This is excellently laid out as a theory, the authors eventually declare that there are no other successful SMS strategies.