Background to Restorative Just Culture

The Restorative Justice term, is borrowed from the ancient and indigenous practices employed by cultures around the globe, including Native American, African, Australian, Canadian communities and so many others. Where wrongdoing was addressed through collective dialogue, repair of harm, and restoration of relationships, rather than punishment alone. These approaches, whilst still focused on the agreed and acceptable punishment, emphasised shared accountability, healing and reintegration into the community.

In modern safety thinking, the concept of Just Culture, being used as a management term first emerged within high-risk industries. The term was first articulated by Professor James Reason in his work on safety management, where he emphasised the importance of distinguishing between human error and at risk behaviour. Reason's model highlighted that most errors arise from system weaknesses rather than individual negligence. However, it is important to acknowledge that early Human Factors thinkers were as early as the 1940s.

Building on Reason’s work and other Human Factor thinkers, Professor Sidney Dekker advanced the field by promoting Safety Differently and Human Factors perspectives further, focusing on how work is actually done, why people's actions make sense in context, and how organisations can learn from everyday, real-world work, rather than blame individuals when outcomes are poor or not as expected.

The concept of a Restorative Just Culture, adopted by Dekker and other safety scholars, builds on these safety science foundations as an aspirational and more humane, collaborative way for individuals, teams, and organisations to respond to incidents and events with compassion, wisdom, and fairness. It is also a key enabler for everyone to learn, and potentially prevent similar errors from re-occurring.

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Here's Prof. Sidney Dekker comparing Just Culture vs Restorative Just Culture...

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