Elsevier

Safety Science

Volume 34, Issues 1–3, February 2000, Pages 215-257
Safety Science

The nature of safety culture: a review of theory and research

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0925-7535(00)00014-XGet rights and content

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on safety culture and safety climate. The main emphasis is on applied research customary in the social psychological or organisational psychological traditions. Although safety culture and climate are generally acknowledged to be important concepts, not much consensus has been reached on the cause, the content and the consequences of safety culture and climate in the past 20 years. Moreover, there is an overall lack of models specifying either the relationship of both concepts with safety and risk management or with safety performance. In this paper, safety culture and climate will be differentiated according to a general framework based on work by Schein (1992 Schein) on organisational culture. This framework distinguishes three levels at which organisational culture can be studied — basis assumptions, espoused values and artefacts. At the level of espoused values we find attitudes, which are equated with safety climate. The basic assumptions, however, form the core of the culture. It is argued that these basic assumptions do not have to be specifically about safety, although it is considered a good sign if they are. It is concluded that safety climate might be considered an alternative safety performance indicator and that research should focus on its scientific validity. More important, however, is the assessment of an organisation's basic assumptions, since these are assumed to be explanatory to its attitudes.

Introduction

In the last two decades empirical research on safety climate and safety culture has developed considerably but, unfortunately, theory has not been through a similar progression. Although most of the research reported is conducted according to the familiar routines of social scientific — especially social and organisational psychological — research, little consensus has been reached on the different aspects commonly associated with a concept within this scientific discipline. For instance, while the importance of the concept of safety climate or culture is stressed by most authors, very few have attempted to support their claim by reporting an indication of its construct validity or predictive validity. Most efforts have not progressed beyond the stage of face validity. Basically, this means that the concept still has not advanced beyond its first developmental stages.

The present paper reviews the research on safety climate and safety culture. It will try to separate out different schools of thought and views. Special attention will be given to the presence of a theoretical model in an approach, because it is thought that such a model, however simple it may be, should be the start of any scientific enterprise. Most of the papers that have been considered for this review are listed in Table 1. While not an exhaustive list, it is thought that it is representative of this research field. Research on culture in general and organisational culture in particular has been of interest not only to social, personnel and organisational psychologists but also to sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists. The main emphasis here, however, is on applied research in the social psychological or organisational psychological traditions. One important assumption associated with these traditions is that a large group of organisational cultures can be described with a limited number of dimensions. Such dimensions are usually sought through large, organisation-wide questionnaire surveys with the ultimate purpose of description or diagnosis and — possibly — intervention. It is acknowledged that this is not the whole story, though. Therefore, some other approaches and views are also discussed.

No review of safety climate or safety culture is complete without a summary of those aspects of the discussion on organisational culture and climate that are relevant for the present review. These aspects will be reviewed first. Next, the different definitions given for safety climate and safety culture are discussed. As will be shown, most authors aim at the same concept but differ on what this concept might encompass, i.e. their operationalisations of the concept differ. As a matter of course this leads to a discussion of the dimensionality of the concept and the causal model underlying it. Unfortunately, not many authors have put forward a theoretical model that can be tested and — ultimately — be falsified. A reflection on the important issue of level of aggregation will round off this part of the review. Thereupon, a framework will be outlined that integrates the review findings.

Section snippets

Organisational culture and climate

The concepts of organisational culture and climate gained much attention in the 1970s and 1980s. Clearly, the appeal of such integrative ‘umbrella’ concepts, especially for managers, is great. The prospect of obtaining an overall helicopter view of one's organisation is indeed attractive. However, because of the fact that these concepts are so global and abstract, they can also run the risk of becoming virtually meaningless.

The literature on, as well as the concept of, organisational culture

Safety climate and safety culture

The earliest located paper on safety climate is Keenan et al. (1951). This study was based on introspective ratings from primary individuals in an automotive plant. Subsequently, theory and research paradigms have improved but not to the extent that a comprehensive theory on safety culture exists, nor that a measurement approach has been developed that has unanimous preference.

The nature of safety culture

The current literature review of safety culture and safety climate has shown that:

  • 1.

    the concepts of safety culture and safety climate are still ill-defined and not worked out well;

  • 2.

    the relationship between safety culture and safety climate is unclear;

  • 3.

    there is considerable confusion about the cause, the content and the consequence of safety culture and climate, i.e.:

    • the cause of safety culture and climate has not been addressed seriously;

    • there is no consensus on the content of safety culture and

Discussion

This review of safety climate and safety culture research has been largely from a social psychological point of view and has focused primarily on results from 20 years of research in this field. An integrative framework has been proposed, merging safety climate with safety culture and delivering categories for both safety attitudes and basic assumptions that are open to investigation. However, a question that has not been posed yet pertains to the use and utility of the safety culture and

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