World view and implications for practice: Occupational health and safety as a model

Abstract

In many countries, particularly Australia, there has been a steady decline in the number of workplace injuries, but the number never seems to reduce below a certain level, approximately 10 compensable injuries per 1000 employees. A mantra of systems dynamics states that the structure of a system is ascertained by understanding the pattern of observable events that result from that system. However, one's understanding of the pattern of events is influenced by the world view that underpins one's view of the pattern. Pepper's four world views or hypotheses offer a framework for discerning a system's patterns: If one views the world through a Formism lens, one sees categories of similar and different events. A Mechanistic world view causes one to see controllable machines with inputs, outputs, processes and feedback. An Organicism world view sees the world as an organism evolving in response to the environment while a Contextual world view sees operators in the world who influence the environment and are influenced by it in a continuous cycle.