Humanware, Human Error, and Hiyari‐Hat: A Template of Unsafe Symptoms

Abstract

For many years, the Japanese construction industry has practiced several accident‐prevention activities. In spite of these safety activities, occupational accidents recur. Why? This paper offers examples of accident‐prevention activities and it reports on a safety survey of construction workers in a Japanese construction company. These examples shows that “humanware” failure accounts for a much greater portion of the underlying causes of occupational accidents. “Humanware” is defined as a function of leadership, followership, and the reciprocal interaction between the two. The safety survey had 7,955 responses; 2,588 responses reported experiencing