Abstract
Behavioural safety programmes seek to turn ‘unsafe cultures’ into ‘safe cultures’. Although safety culture improvement campaigns often successfully reduce accident rates, their effectiveness fades over time, with a persistent rump of accidents and incidents remaining. It will be suggested that this is because the steps taken to improve occupational health and safety culture differ from those necessary to improve systems safety culture. Behavioural safety programmes are unsuccessful due to an over-simplistic application of social science theories by we engineers. A more sophisticated cultural model will be offered to help improve future campaigns and help understand why systems safety needs contributions from multiple disciplines. Finally risk-free cultures will be contrasted with strategies to adapt an existing project culture.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bain A (2008) Cultural diversity and careers within defence acquisition: scruffy civvies and poker-stiff matelots. Cranfield University MSc Dissertation
Bain A, De Fossard J (2005) Measuring safety – development of a systems safety management maturity model, with systems readiness levels. Int Syst Saf Conf (ISSC05), San Diego, USA
Bennett G, Wilson I (2010) Achieving excellence in process safety management through people, process and plant. DNV white paper presented at Downstream Asia, Singapore. http://www.theenergyexchange.co.uk/admin/ Accessed 4 October 2011
BHP (2006) Sustainability report. BHP Billiton. http://www.bhpbilliton.com/home/aboutus/sustainability/reports/Documents/2006%20BHP%20Billiton%20Sustainability%20Report%20documents.pdf. Accessed 17 October 2011
Bird FE Jr, Germain GL (1986) Practical loss control leadership. International Loss Control Institute, Loganville, Ga
Heinrich HW (1931) Industrial accident prevention: a scientific approach. McGraw-Hill
Hewitt, M (2011) Relative culture strength, a key to sustainable world-class safety performance. http://www2.dupont.com/Sustainable_Solutions/en_US/assets/downloads/A_Key_to_Sustainable_World-Class_Safety_Performance.pdf . Accessed 17 October 2011
HSL (2003) Safety climate tool. Health and Safety Laboratory. www.hsl.gov.uk/health-andsafety-products/safety-climate-tool.aspx. Accessed 5 October 2011
Johnson G, Scholes K (1992) Exploring corporate strategy Massie RK (1991) Dreadnought – Britain, Germany and the coming of the great war. Random House
MoD (2005) JSP 430 MoD ship safety management, part 2: policy guidance. Issue 3. Ministry of Defence
O'Neil D (2006) Processes of change. http://anthro.palomar.edu/change/change_2.htm. Accessed 4 October 2011
Reason J (1997) Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Ashgate, Farnham
Reason J (1998) Achieving a safe culture: theory and practice. Work and Stress 12(3)293-306
Schein EH (1985) Organizational culture and leadership. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
Schein EH (1990) Organisational culture. Am Psychol 45(2)109-119
Schouwenaars E (2008) The risks arising from major accident hazards, lessons from the past, opportunities for the future. DNV paper presented at Refining Management Forum, Copenhagen
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bain, A. (2012). Do we truly understand Safety Culture?. In: Dale, C., Anderson, T. (eds) Achieving Systems Safety. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2494-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2494-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-2493-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-2494-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)