Purpose – This paper aims to present a practitioner-oriented Safety Ethogram for military exercises. Itspurpose is to make safety-related learning practices easier to observe, discuss and improve during planning,execution, debrief and after-action review.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on qualitative content analysis of interview material onsafety planning, coordination, deviation, intervention and learning in military exercises. Of 42 interviewtranscript files, 38 were readable and analysed through 74 traceable meaning units using a structured codingframework focused on interview-described safety practices.
Findings – Four recurring areas of practice were identified: formal safety governance and risk work,deviation and drift from intended practice, intervention to correct or redirect exercise activity andlearning through experience and institutional memory. Together, these areas show that safety inexercises is not maintained by rules alone. It also depends on how governance is translated into action,how drift is recognised, whether intervention is legitimate and usable and whether lessons identified arecarried forward into future planning.
Research limitations/implications – The framework is based on interview-described practice rather thandirect observation. It should therefore be read as a practice-informed tool that requires further testing in liveexercise settings.
Practical implications – The safety ethogram offers a practical vocabulary for those who plan, lead,observe and evaluate exercises. It can be used to strengthen observation, structure debriefs, diagnose drift andimprove the link between after-action learning and future safety governance.
Originality/value – This paper contributes a practice-based framework for examining how safety isenacted in military exercises as workplaces. Rather than treating safety as an abstract cultural property,it makes visible the concrete patterns through which safety is supported, weakened, corrected andlearned.
2026. Vol. 38, nr 9, s. 207-224
Military exercises, Safety, Workplace learning, After-action review, Organisational learning, Qualitative content analysis