[SystemSafety] Safety Culture

[Fredrik Asplund]

1,3. As Gareth alluded to, every company has an organisational culture which safety culture is a part of. "Safety culture" is simply the aspects of organisational culture that relates to risk, a term to allow others to know what you are focusing on. That is if you accept that organisations are "more" than their individual members. (For a basic discussion regarding this I suggest Nooteboom, 2000, "Learning by Interaction: Absorptive Capacity, Cognitive Distance and Governance") However, there are very different views on what "culture" then is. (See e.g. Edwards, Davey, and Armstrong, 2013, "Returning to the roots of culture: A review and re-conceptualisation of safety culture".) I think I have already made my perspective clear, but there are more pragmatic ones - BAE Systems for instance released a framework that pointed out 10 different hands-on areas (communication, learning and sharing, ...).

2,4. Well, that depends on what *you* accept as proof of a causal relationship, which is intimately tied to which research paradigm, as well as which theoretical framework, you assume. Which ones would you assume/accept? (Sure, I am being a bit offhand here, but I don't really understand for what purpose you are asking the questions? Without narrowing them down a bit, they are nearly impossible to answer. So, perhaps if you elaborated a bit, I could give you my perspective on it.)

Sincerely,
/ Fredrik

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Peter Bernard Ladkin
Sent: den 10 december 2017 10:16
To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Safety Culture

So, a couple of short questions.

1. How do you tell if a company has a "safety culture"?
2. How do you tell that this "safety culture" is causally effective in the company fulfilling attribute X?
3. What are those attributes X of companies that correlate with safety?
4. How do you know that your answer to 3 is right?

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany MoreInCommon Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de