Managing Safety: Ambiguous Information and Chronic Unease

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Managers rarely have full and unequivocal data on their external environment or on the state of their internal processes and in this paper we discuss how they deal with ambiguity, in relation to organizational safety. Drawing on our research into managers' safety intelligence and on the value of chronic unease for safety management, we show how both requisite anxiety and problem solving skills can help managers make the best use of ambiguous safety information.