(Mis)understanding Safety Culture and Its Relationship to Safety Management

Abstract

Although the concept of safety culture was coined in relation to major accidents like Chernobyl and Piper Alpha, it has been embraced by the safety community at large as a cause for unsafe practice. In this article, three approaches to safety culture are discussed in terms of their underlying concepts of culture and organizational culture. Culture is an intangible, fuzzy concept encompassing acquired assumptions that is shared among the members of a group and that provides meaning to their perceptions and actions and those of others. The basic assumptions that form the essence of a culture are shared, yet tacit, convictions, which manifest themselves subtly in the visible world. As applied by safety researchers, the culture concept is deprived of much of its depth and subtlety, and is morphed into a grab bag of behavioral and other visible characteristics, without reference to the meaning these characteristics might actually have, and often infused with normative overtones. By combining the three approaches, we can resurrect the notion of safety culture and strengthen its analytical potential in understanding the development and implementation of safety management systems.

Prediction of phenomenon of human factor and correction of its negative effect

“…Sorensen (2002) notes that one of the omissions in the guides published by the nuclear power industry for establishing and evaluating safety culture is an explicit link between safety culture and safety operations, and that such a link is assumed (but not demonstrated) to be in place. Guldenmund (2010) identifies a number of reasons why safety culture remains a highly valued construct despite some of the deficiencies previously identified, including that if there is a perception that indicators of safety culture deterioration can be identified, these can be used as a leading indicator or a pending catastrophe, and that a healthy safety culture is viewed by many as a mediator for safe performance even in the absence of other aspects of a robust safety management program (instrumentation, procedures or supervision). Others caution against the overreliance on a robust safety culture to compensate for other safety deficiencies.…”

“…Silbey (2009), citing O'Reilly and Chatman (1996), states that culture names "what is left over after you forgot what it was you were originally trying to learn", and advocates that safety culture research suggests that "responsibility for consequences of complex technologies resides in an cultural ether, everywhere or nowhere" and that focus on culture has been a supplement for addressing the structural and historical conditions that affect safe organizational performance. Further, Guldenmund (2010) highlights that safety culture has become a term used to "explain everything relating to safety failures that cannot be explained in another way." Reason (1997) advocates that organizational accidents can be mitigated only if organizations attend to three different safety systems: the person model, the organization model, and the engineering model.…”

“…Silbey (2009) notes that most of the assessment techniques used to measure safety culture rely on data collected from individuals through survey instruments, and thus may actually be measuring safety climate. Similarly, Guldenmund (2010) suggests that safety climate scales have been used extensively to (attempt to) measure safety culture.…”

Fatores constituintes da cultura de segurança: olhar sobre a indústria de mineração

“…Safety culture is part of organizational culture (Guldenmund, 2010;Richter & Koch, 2004). When organizational culture prioritizes work safety, then safety culture is present in the organization (Glendon & Stanton, 2000;Silva & Lima, 2004).…”

“…Therefore, whenever aspects related to workplace safety flaws cannot be clarified after investigations, answers are sought in the organizational culture, according to Guldenmund (2010). Since this concept was presented in the Chernobyl nuclear accident investigation report, it has been considered a key factor for safety in organizations (Naevestad, 2009).…”