Elsevier

Safety Science

Volume 45, Issue 6, July 2007, Pages 637-652
Safety Science

Understanding and assessing safety culture through the lens of organizational management of uncertainty

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2007.04.002Get rights and content

Abstract

The management of uncertainties is discussed as a key challenge for organizations and two approaches to handling uncertainties are introduced, i.e. minimizing uncertainties versus coping with uncertainties. The analysis of rules as for instance laid out in standard operating procedures is suggested as one method for identifying the approach to uncertainty management chosen in a particular organization. Given advantages and disadvantages of both approaches to uncertainty management, loose coupling is discussed as a way of balancing the two approaches and a conceptualization of safety culture as a means for loose coupling is proposed. One of the central controversies underlying discussions on designing organizations for safety, i.e. the relationship between autonomy and safety, is expanded upon in order to deepend the understanding of different design strategies within the framework of uncertainty management. Finally, it is argued that the role and importance of safety culture differs depending on the chosen approach to uncertainty management, requiring that any safety culture assessment is preceeded by an assessment of the fit between the uncertainties an organization is confronted with and the chosen forms of handling these uncertainties. Methods for carrying out these assessments are suggested.

Introduction

Safety is frequently defined as the smallest possible and/or acceptable risk, while risk is the product of possible damages and the probability of their occurrence. Inherent in these definitions is the concept of uncertainty. This provides an interesting link to a core issue in general theories of organization, i.e. the management of uncertainty in organizations, which will be expanded upon in this article.

The kinds of uncertainties an organization has to deal with and how these uncertainties are handled by the organization have been analyzed by prominent authors like Thompson, 1967, Perrow, 1967, Susman, 1976. They have helped to systematize the nature of uncertainties relevant to organizations and the ways organizations deal with them. Two general sources of uncertainties are usually distinguished, i.e. the transformation processes an organization has to perform and the environment within which these processes take place. An organization’s capabilities of handling uncertainties stemming from these different sources are determined by the chosen degree of specialization, forms of coordination, degree of standardization and formalization, and degree of (de-)centralization of decision-making.

After presented two basic approaches to uncertainty in organizations – minimizing uncertainties versus competent coping with uncertainties – and the concept of loose coupling as a bridge between the two approaches, the role of safety culture will be discussed in light of these distinctions and a procedure suggested for evaluating safety culture in combination with an analysis of the organization’s chosen form of uncertainty management.

Section snippets

Two ways of handling uncertainties in organizations: minimizing versus competent coping

Before there was much understanding of organizations as open systems, organization design was based mainly on feed-forward control (see Fig. 1). Enormous efforts were put into planning and continuous monitoring of the execution of these plans, providing minimal degrees of freedom to the people in charge of carrying out the plans and taking any deviation from plans as signs for the necessity of even more planning and monitoring. Taylorist organizations are the prime examples of this approach to

Rules as core indicator for the chosen form of uncertainty management in organization

In line with the minimizing uncertainties approach most high-risk systems are characterized by high levels of standardization in the form of standard operating procedures, which are developed with ever increasing detail in order to streamline human action and to reduce its influence as a risk factor. Procedures are often a direct consequence of incidents and accidents the analysis of which provides knowledge of unforeseen wrongful courses of action against which new rules are developed as a

Balancing the two approaches to uncertainty management – Mechanisms for loose coupling

In view of the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches to uncertainty management, Weick has suggested the principle of loose coupling in order to simultaneously ensure autonomy of actors and sufficient binding forces for all actors to use their autonomy to promote the organization‘s objectives (Orton and Weick, 1990, Weick, 1976): “The concept of loose coupling allows theorists to posit that any system, in any organizational location, can act on both a technical level, which is closed

Safety culture as a means for loose coupling

Weick (1987) has pointed out, that culture serves as a strong basis for a form of coordination and integration that incorporates both decentralization of autonomy and centralization of values and norms as binding forces for local action: “Before you can decentralize, you first have to centralize so that people are socialized to use similar decision premises and assumptions so that when they operate their own units, those decentralized operations are equivalent and coordinated. This is precisely

Considering contingencies: neither minimizing uncertainty nor coping with uncertainty as the one road to safety

With its emphasis on supporting local actors in controlling variances at their source, the socio-technical model of safety culture is primarily based on the coping with uncertainties approach to uncertainty management. Elements of loose coupling are included through making a deliberate effort to discuss the balance between autonomy and central control in the audited organizations. However, some results obtained with the questionnaire in safety management audits point to potential problems with

Assessing safety culture within the framework of uncertainty management

From the preceding discussion two general preconditions for the assessment of safety culture can be derived:

  • (1)

    The role of safety culture is different in the two approaches to uncertainty management. While safety culture is a crucial “soft” coordination mechanism within the competent coping approach to uncertainty management that helps to coordinate autonomous actors to achieve a superordinate goal, the role of safety culture within the minimizing uncertainties approach is that of an additional

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