The nature of safety culture: A survey of the state-of-the-art

doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2006.09.003

Safety Science

Volume 45, Issue 10, December 2007, Pages 993-1012

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2006.09.003 Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on safety culture, placing particular focus on research undertaken from 1998 onwards. The term culture is clarified as it is typically applied to organizations, to safety, and particularly to construction safety. Some clarification in terms of positive safety culture, safety culture models, levels of aggregation and safety performance is provided by presenting appropriate empirical evidence and its theoretical developments. In general, safety culture is thought to influence employees’ attitudes and behavior in relation to an organization’s ongoing health and safety performance. Implications for future research in the area are addressed, as in recent years safety culture has become the focus of much attention in all industries, including the construction industry.

Introduction

In order to contribute to the overall reduction of workplace accidents, workplace safety has been studied from different points of view (Silva et al., 2004). Whether technical or psychological, these viewpoints lead to the promotion of a positive safety culture – a concept intrinsically linked to organizational culture that has attracted much attention across a broad spectrum of industries. Despite the key role played by organizational culture in determining an organization’s success or failure, there is no apparent consensus on how to describe the culture of an organization (Guldenmund, 2000). Furthermore, unresolved debate persists as to whether an organization has or is a culture. Against this brief background, it is not surprising that no accepted model of the safety culture exists. This paper therefore reviews existing literature on safety culture, and provides some clarification in terms of definitions, empirical evidence and its theoretical development. Based on a critical review of related published works (from 1998 onwards), the paper analyzes different schools of thought and views in the construction safety context. Although the development of a safety culture model is beyond the scope of this paper, a conceptual model is proposed that seeks to assess safety culture in general, and on construction sites in particular. The next section summarizes organizational culture, as a review of safety culture may not be complete without it when site operations are influenced by organizational characteristics (Sawacha et al., 1999).

Section snippets

Organizational culture

The American Heritage Dictionary defines culture as “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population”. The organizational development community might have borrowed the term ‘culture’ from anthropologists. Brigges (1992) argues that there are several important differences between ‘culture’ as commonly used by anthropologists

Safety culture

The concept of safety culture is often presented separately from an organization’s other characteristics, such as the work schedule, technology, business strategy and financial decision-making (Reiman and Oedewald, 2004). Reiman and Oedewald (2004) reveal that this conceptual separation of safety culture reduces the term to refer only to factors that are clearly connected with safety, such as safety attitudes and safety values. Although it has been widely used for many years, the concept of

Discussion and implication

‘Unitary organizational cultures evolve when all members of an organization face roughly the same problems, when everyone communicates with almost everyone else, and when each member adopts a common set of understandings for enacting proper and consensually approved behavior’ (Van Maanen et al., 1985, p. 37, cited in Hale, 2004); even leaving aside issues of power and interest. These conditions rarely exist within contemporary organizations, which are in line with the lack of consensus

Conclusion

This paper reviews the existing literature on safety culture and provides essential clarification in terms of definitions, models, level of aggregation, positive safety culture, construction safety culture and safety performance by providing appropriate empirical evidence and theoretical development. From this article, the following conclusions may be summarized:

Many organizations, including construction companies around the world, are showing increasing interest in the concept of safety

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to express his appreciation to the Higher Education Commission, Government of Pakistan for granting the PhD scholarship to undertake this study. Support from Gammon Construction Limited is also gratefully acknowledged. Finally, the authors acknowledge the constructive criticism of the anonymous reviewers, whose comments have helped us to improve our paper.

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