A game of adoption – but playing by whose rules?
An integrative systematic literature review of the factors that drive safety professionals to adopt particular safety concepts — covering 107 papers from 1990–2023. Argues that adoption is not a purely rational or evidence-based process but is shaped by institutional isomorphism, affective dynamics, professional identity, and the 'safety market'. Introduces a multilevel conceptual model integrating intrinsic concept characteristics with individual, interpersonal, institutional and wider infrastructural influences. Explicitly names psychological safety (alongside just culture and safety culture) as an example of a safety concept subject to fashion dynamics — adopted for reasons beyond safety improvement, including legitimacy, professional identity, and normative conformity. The 'safety market' framing — in which concepts are produced, disseminated, and adopted through a complex ecology of academics, consultants, regulators, and organisations — directly parallels the enclosure and commodification arguments in Tom's work on how PS has been narrowed and depoliticised.
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Neighbours (11)
- Language and Symbolic Power
- The Forms of Capital
- PS is Political
- Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature
- Psychological Safety: A Systematic Review of the Literature
- Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct
- History of PS
- Not Same for Everyone
- Too Much PS?
- Five Pillars Critique
- We Don't Need PS