Disclaimer
The information provided in this document can only assist you in the most general way. This
document does not replace any statutory requirements under any relevant State and Territory
legislation. Safe Work Australia is not liable for any loss resulting from any action taken or
reliance made by you on the information or material contained on this document. Before relying
on the material, users should carefully make their own assessment as to its accuracy, currency,
completeness and relevance for their purposes, and should obtain any appropriate professional
advice relevant to their particular circumstances. The views in this report should not be taken to
represent the views of Safe Work Australia unless otherwise expressly stated.
Creative Commons
With the exception of the Safe Work Australia logo, this report is licensed by Safe Work
Australia under a Creative Commons 3.0 Australia Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en
In essence, you are free to copy, communicate and adapt the work, as long as you attribute the
work to Safe Work Australia and abide by the other licensing terms. The report should be
attributed as Clarifying culture.
Enquiries regarding the licence and any use of the report are welcome at:
Copyright Officer
Safe Work Australia
GPO Box 641 Canberra ACT 2601
Email: copyrightrequests@safeworkaustralia.gov.au
ISBN 978-0-642-78711-8 [Online PDF]
ISBN 978-0-642-78712-5 [Online DOCX]
Clarifying culture
Verna Blewett PhD, Director, New Horizon Consulting Pty Ltd (June 2011)
PROJECT BACKGROUND
This paper was initiated as part of the development process of the Australian Work Health and
Safety Strategy 2012-2022 (Australian Strategy). This paper is intended to inform and support the
Australian Strategy by articulating and analysing the existing evidence base for Safe Work
Australia to consider and by identifying the strategic implications for the Australian Strategy of
organisational culture.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
There are many myths and misconceptions about organisational culture as it relates to health and
safety. Many have envisaged a discrete “safety” culture in organisations. Moreover, this is seen
as being concrete, predictable and able to be managed or manipulated in some way. In fact, there
is no “safety” culture that can be divorced from the wider organisational culture. An organisational
culture is largely invisible, subtle, and can only be detected through indicators which are
themselves not the culture. Rather the organisational culture is the context or environment within
which the organisation is understood. Culture is so elusive that it does not and cannot provide a
clear explanation for failures in technological systems.
There are dangers inherent in trying to manipulate something believed to be simple and
predictable when in fact it is complex and unstable. However, there is evidence that certain
elements can influence an organisational culture to enable and support positive health and safety
outcomes.
The UK Health and Safety Executive suggests safety culture is influenced by:






management commitment and style
employee involvement
training and competence
communication
compliance with procedures, and
organisational learning.
The cultural dimensions most closely associated with good work health and safety management
in the Australian context have been identified as:






mindfulness
workgroup cohesion
trust in management
organisational justice
supervisor support, and
role clarity.
Although organisational culture is not able to be managed, it may be malleable. This means,
rather than controlling a culture as if it were an object external to the individuals within the
organisation, culture can be changed from within through the strategic application of evidencebased initiatives.
To separate work health and safety culture from organisational culture and treat it differently can
alienate work health and safety from key organisational decision-making.
1
Employee attitude surveys fail to identify the mechanisms and systems that shape the
organisation. Instead data from a combination of qualitative methods and quantitative methods
should be collected, then compared and analysed to form an evidence base.
Implications for the new Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy
Culture is an important and increasingly dominant aspect of the work health and safety sphere of
activity. It is therefore central to achieving the 2022 Outcomes within the Australian Strategy.
The Australian Strategy must be informed by evidence and initiate actions that will lead to
reduced exposure to health and safety risks in workplaces.
The following initiatives can support the achievement of the Australian Strategy vision:







Use evidence obtained through multi-method research to form the foundation for
strategies for regulators and policy makers.
Adopt an evidence-based approach that promotes what is known about culture and
dismisses supposition and conjecture.
Remove references to “health” and/or “safety” in association with culture and
leadership.
Increase emphasis on integration of work health and safety into the business systems
and processes across organisations.
Reduce the emphasis on ‘managing’ culture; instead focus on controlling risks at the
source.
Differentiate between safety culture/climate and behavioural change.
Build and develop the evidence base. Develop methods for capturing the knowledge
that has arisen through experience with organisational culture as it affects health and
safety, and make it available for peer review.
2
Contents
Project background ............................................................................................................ 1
Executive summary ............................................................................................................ 1
Introduction and background ............................................................................................ 4
Organisational culture and climate.................................................................................... 4
Safety culture and climate.................................................................................................. 9
Barriers and enablers of organisational culture ............................................................. 17
Strategic policy implications for the new Australian Strategy ...................................... 18
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 20
References ........................................................................................................................ 21
3
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
There has been considerable debate about ‘safety culture’ in the literature, as well as among
health and safety professionals; but as Hopkins suggests, “safety culture is an attractive idea…it
is not, however, a straightforward idea” (Hopkins, 2002: 14). The literature shows limited
agreement on the concept of safety culture. Despite a 30-year history there is no agreed
definition, theory is under-developed, and research is fragmented. Perhaps the muddle of mixed
concepts arises from the nature of the genesis of the term, while the introduction of the term
‘safety climate’ has further muddied the waters. Many papers on the topic commence with a
statement suggesting that there is general agreement about the importance of safety
culture/climate to workplace health and safety, go on to state that safety culture/climate is not well
understood, and then offer a contribution that fails to add clarity to the domain because it is
founded on poorly articulated first principles or theory. Whilst the offering might be interesting and
thoughtful, it may add to the confusion rather than provide lucidity.
This is not just a question of semantics, epistemology or ideology that can be ignored; rather it
goes to the core of thinking about workplace health and safety and the translation of knowledge
into practical application in organisations. Therefore, in examining the literature this paper uses as
a filter the question, “how does this contribute to knowledge, or provide evidence, that will help
make workplaces healthy and safe?” It examines the broader concept of organisational culture,
describes the place that workplace health and safety has in this, and considers how the current
debate about safety culture and safety climate might be turned to provide insight into the features
of organisations that might lead to healthy and safe workplaces and aid the development of
effective interventions.
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND CLIMATE
Why is organisational culture important?
Ask people in any organisation about the nature of their workplace and it’s likely that they’ll be
able to describe their impressions. Workers and managers alike are able to discern differences in
the atmosphere of organisations or parts of organisations and may use general descriptors such
as casual, warm, friendly, tense, or uninviting (or other more colourful terms) to give the
impression of the workplace. They may insist that these features of the workplace make a
difference to the function and outcome of the organisation (S. P. Clarke, 2006). These descriptive
features of the organisation might be regarded as a manifestation of the organisational culture; in
folkloric terms, ‘the way we do things around here’.
Understanding what makes organisations ‘tick’ might give insight into how they can be structured,
or how they might operate, to be more effective, efficient, productive, healthy and safe.
Understanding how culture operates at various levels in organisations can help to explain the
everyday frustrations of organisational operation, as well as provide insight into our personal
assumptions and how as individuals we might fit within, or influence, organisational culture
(Schein, 2010: 2). So understanding what organisational culture is, how it is manifest, how it might
be assessed (or measured) and how it might be altered or manipulated are areas of management
that have had increasing focus in recent years.
Defining organisational culture
Writers on organisations come from a variety of traditions such as psychology, anthropology,
sociology and organisational behaviour, and each tradition has a different way of viewing how
organisations work and what contributes to them not working. Academic background influences
how researchers view organisations, and how they examine organisational culture. For example,
in general psychologists approach organisational culture from a positivist perspective attempting
to quantify the features of culture using survey instruments, while anthropologists use qualitative
approaches, such as ethnography, to describe what is observed and to look for meaning.
4
Several reviews of organisational culture have been written in the last five years describing the
evolution of the concept from the 1950s (Andriopoulos & Dawson, 2009), its themes (Sun, 2008),
and how it applies in specific industries for example, nursing (S. P. Clarke, 2006) or rail (Weyman,
Pidgeon, Jeffcott, & Walls, 2006). More recently questions have been asked about the relevance
of the debate to organisations that are structured on non-traditional lines; for example those that
engage a contingent workforce, where contracting is a feature, or where shift work predominates
(Bellot, 2011).
In their wide-ranging work on the theory of organisations, Mary Jo Hatch and Ann Cunliffe (2006)
describe the rise of the socially-constructed concept of organisational culture from its wider
anthropological and sociological roots in human culture. They examine the definitions of
organisational culture that arose in the mid-twentieth century onwards and note that while it is the
concept of ‘sharing’ that is common to them all, ‘sharing’ itself can have contradictory meanings.
‘Sharing’ can be seen as developing unity (Schein, 2010) with shared norms, values, assumptions
and beliefs, along with the so-called observable ‘artefacts’ of shared behaviour. Schein has
moved little from his early views on organisational culture and most recently defines it is as:
… a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and,
therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to
those problems. (Schein, 2010: 18).
This definition while compelling at first reading views organisational culture as something that is
unitary, agreed, and relatively static; develops over time in a stable organisation and can be
passed on to newcomers. The relevance of this to 21st Century organisations is debatable. The
changing labour market and increasing use of novel organisational forms with distributed
organisation members, work from home, and work in ‘the cloud’ may change the need for and the
capacity to reach agreement on cultural norms.
Other theorists emphasise that ‘sharing’ can also be a form of fragmentation (as in sharing a
pizza) and therefore place emphasis on differences (Meyerson & Martin, 1987), asserting symbols
and stories can demonstrate this (Morgan, 1997). The concept of shifting subcultures in
organisations arises from theories of culture as fragmentation (implying conflicted differences) and
differentiation (implying useful differences). For example Hofstede (1998) described three distinct
subcultures in an insurance company: a professional, an administrative and a customer-interface
subculture. “The cultural rifts between the subcultures could be readily recognised in the
company’s practice, and had tangible consequences” (Hofstede, 1998). While some
interpretations of organisational culture seek to explain unity in organisations, others use
organisational culture to describe subcultures with varying degrees of fragmentation and
differentiation in organisations that explain and perhaps encourage diversity (S. P. Clarke, 2006;
Meyerson & Martin, 1987).
Schein defines culture on four levels: macrocultures, organisational cultures, subcultures and
microcultures (Schein, 2010: 2). Macroculture refers to national cultures based on ethnicity or
religion but might also include occupational groups such as medicine and law that exist
internationally. Macroculture provides the overarching context for organisational culture.
Organisational culture (or corporate culture) he suggests exists in “private, public, non-profit and
government organisations” (Schein, 2010: 2). Subcultures are also organisational and he defines
these as occupational groups that exist within organisations that have their own specific values
and norms. Microcultures he describes as existing within “small, coherent units…that cut across
occupational groups” (Schein, 2010: 2).
At this point it is interesting to note the terms subculture and microculture are used reasonably
consistently in the management literature to refer to groups of people with common traits or
objectives. It is rarely used to describe areas of management action or responsibility (such as
finance or marketing) in the way ‘safety culture’ has developed.
5
Theorists are drawing on an increasingly wide range of metaphors, including music and literature,
to describe organisational culture and to investigate further questions about how it might be
influenced (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006: 213); thus the field remains fluid. Current explorations seek
the relationship between culture, power and influence, and leadership (Lok & Crawford, 1999;
Schein, 2010) that may lead to new theories of organisations. Bryson suggests there is a need to
use theories of organisational culture to improve working lives by examining dominant, emergent
and residual cultures following organisational change (Bryson, 2008), while Morrill and Raz
examine organisations as societies or communities of practice (Morrill, 2008; Raz, 2007). These
shifts in the theoretical development of the concept of organisational culture may well have
application for improving work health and safety.
Organisational climate
Organisational climate is perceived as a manifestation of organisational culture, but it is another
construct that is unclear in the literature. Its origins were in the work of Kurt Lewin in the 1930s (as
cited in Bellot 2011) and preceded the coining of the term ‘organisational culture’ by Pettigrew in
1979 (as cited in Bellot 2011). The most commonly quoted definition was coined by Tagiuri and
Litwin (1968) and states that organisational climate is
…the relatively enduring organizational environment that (a) is experienced by the occupants, (b)
influences their behavior, and (c) can be described in terms of the values of a particular set of
characteristics or attributes of the environment (Tagiuri & Litwin, 1968: 25).
The similarity to definitions of organisational culture is obvious, so it is unsurprising there is
considerable muddle in the literature over these intertwined concepts. Other authors conclude the
two concepts “address the same phenomenon” (Denison, 1996) and there is significant fit
between the two concepts (Yahyagil, 2006). Schein has been influential in defining climate as
“…only a surface manifestation of culture”; a group of ‘artefacts’ or constructs that are visible and
measurable (Schein, 1990) that include documents such as organisation charts and statements of
policy. More recently he narrowed his definition of organisational climate to the
…feeling that is conveyed in a group by the physical layout and the way in which members of the
organisation interact with each other, with customers, or with other outsiders (Schein, 2010: 15).
Indeed, he paints ‘climate’ as one of a list of 11 “observable events and underlying forces”
together forming an anthropological model of organisational culture (Schein, 2010: 14-16). At best
‘climate’ might be regarded as a proxy for culture, but there is little clarity in the literature about
the validity or reliability of this approach. Nonetheless, the construction of climate as the
behavioural manifestation of culture underpins behaviourist approaches to work health and safety.
Can manipulation of these surface manifestations (as demonstrated in individual behaviour) lead
to the development of healthy and safe workplaces? The warning about this use comes from
Schein himself:
Some culture analysts see climate as the equivalent to culture, but it is better thought of as the
product of some of the underlying assumptions and is, therefore, a manifestation of the culture … it
is both easy to observe and very difficult to decipher. (Schein, 2010: 24).
All in all these are slippery concepts; as Schein warns us, at the level of artefacts (including
climate) there is considerable ambiguity in interpretation by observers—essentially, interpretation
of cultural artefacts (including climate) is not possible unless the observer “has experienced the
culture at the deeper level of assumptions” (Schein, 2010:24). They are only able to be known by
those in the know.
Both culture and climate are deemed to share constructs such as leadership (Al-Shammari,
1992), organisational socialisation (Taormina, 2008), employee participation (Nerdinger, 2008)
and effectiveness (Aydin & Ceylan, 2009). So it seems that the culture-climate debate is
increasingly arid, as Bellot summarises:
6
In fact, it is clear that both culture and climate attempt to address the interplay between individuals
and their surroundings, but it becomes a circular debate to determine which produces and/or affects
the other (Bellot, 2011).
Most recently the literature describes the difference between organisational culture and
organisational climate as a matter of research method. Culture tends to be researched
qualitatively (with anthropological methods) while climate tends to be researched quantitatively
(through surveys) (Asif, 2011).
For our purposes, the debate needs to turn to the question “what makes a difference?” and if that
is culture, climate or a combination of these and other constructs, then as people who want to
influence improvement in the lives of working women and men, this is what needs to be identified
and addressed. This paper takes the middle ground and uses the terms ‘culture’ and ‘climate’
(both organisational and ‘safety’) interchangeably.
Organisational culture and its relationship to work health and safety
Where does work health and safety fit into an organisation’s culture? Is the management of work
health and safety different from other areas of management such as accounting and sales?
Empirical evidence suggests this is not the case. In their 3-year examination of 13 Australian
small and medium enterprises, Blewett and Shaw (2001) found that the style of management of
work health and safety was reflected more generally in the strategic choices that were made in
organisations. They were able to identify three categories of work health and safety performance
(proactive, reactive and transitional) in the responses of the enterprises to change and found the
features differentiating one category of enterprise from another applied to other areas of
enterprise activity, such as production, quality and dealing with cost pressures. The primary,
cultural features that differentiated the organisations were: autonomy, job control and a culture of
respect, and the integration of work health and safety into decision-making (Blewett & Shaw,
2001: 51).
Westrum defined culture as “the organisation’s pattern of response to the problems and
opportunities it encounters” (Westrum, 2004). By examining information flows in response to
trouble in organisations in the health sector, he found a predictive relationship between
organisational culture and safety. In his analysis he identified three categories of organisational
culture: pathological (focussed on personal needs), bureaucratic (focussed on departmental
needs) and generative (focussed on the organisation’s mission). However he warns the
relationship is not definitive and proof is hard to find (Westrum, 2004).
There is evidence management systems governing work health and safety (such as the
development of policy, employee participation, training, communication, planning, and control and
review) act as a manifestation of organisational culture (Fernández-Muñiz, Montes-Peón, &
Vázquez-Ordás, 2007; Zohar & Luria, 2005). Links have also been found between organisational
culture and risk management in organisations. Researchers correlated the results of an
organisational culture survey that looked at mechanistic versus organic-style cultures with another
survey designed to gauge the implementation of enterprise risk management and found “organic
cultures tend to make greater progress” with risk management. They concluded organisations
with organic approaches to risk management (defined as involving strong leadership and worker
participation) tend to progress more effectively than traditional rule-bound (mechanistic)
organisations and this should influence how managers set about dealing with risk management
(Kimbrough & Componation, 2009).
Other researchers, examining the metal working industry in Turkey, showed correlations between
dimensions of organisational culture and firm performance and effectiveness. Customer
satisfaction, employee satisfaction, organisational commitment, and financial and growth
performance were considered indicators of firm performance and effectiveness. These showed
significant correlations with a range of cultural dimensions that may have implications for work
health and safety including “involvement, collaboration, transmission of information, learning, care
7
about clients, strategic direction, reward and incentive system, systems of control,
communication, coordination and integration” (Aydin & Ceylan, 2009). These relationships are
likely to be complex, and it is difficult to assert cause and effect, but the authors attempt to build a
model and conclude that high levels of employee satisfaction require considerable organisational
commitment and a customer-focus that is built on good communication and coordination. These
features require strategic, big-picture thinking to implement, which in turn contributes to
organisational effectiveness and performance (Aydin & Ceylan, 2009).
Reporting on the use of an instrument designed to measure organisational climate with respect to
creativity and change, Isaksen et al (2001) identify organisational climate as the “intervening
variable that affects individual and organisational performance” and they describe organisational
culture as
…the cement that holds an organisation together… [organisational] culture determines the
worldview or mindset for those who belong. It influences the way people behave, particularly how
they respond to surprise, ambiguity, creativity, and change (Isaksen, Lauer, Ekvall, & Britz, 2001).
They propose a model that identifies nine dimensions associated with creativity and innovation in
organisations: challenge and involvement, freedom, trust/openness, idea time,
playfulness/humour, conflict, idea support, debate, and risk-taking. Knowing what helps and
hinders creativity and innovation in organisations may have applicability for work health and safety
in terms of problem-solving to reduce risk.
There has been considerable research effort into what makes organisations tick; those features of
organisational culture or climate that might contribute to the way organisations operate, their
effectiveness and their performance. However, research gaps remain in the relationship between
the various features that have been identified and in particular, where work health and safety fits
in the organisational scheme of things. Further work needs to be done to elucidate these
relationships, even though they are likely to be complex.
Managing organisational culture
Pertinent to this paper is the debate still raging around the assertion that organisational culture
can be managed; that is, the concept of organisational culture as a control mechanism within
organisations. Does culture influence behaviour (through shared values et cetera)? If so, can
organisational values be instilled, selected for, or manipulated to ensure the desired behaviour?
Or do patterns of organisational culture arise from the deeply-held and difficult to influence beliefs
and assumptions that are brought into the organisation by the individuals that make it up? If so,
are these unlikely to be readily altered or can a set of overarching values be built (Woodall,
1996)? Hatch and Cunliffe (2006) provide wise advice on these questions, warning that although
it might be reasonable to be concerned about organisational culture, trying to interfere with it can
have unpredictable outcomes. They advise that we
… need to give up thinking of culture as an entity and [trying] to understand what it does. Instead,
think of culture as a context for meaning making and interpretation. Do not think of trying to
manage culture, other people’s meanings and interpretations are highly unmanageable, think
instead about trying to culturally manage your organisation, that is, manage your organisation with
cultural awareness of the multiplicity of meaning that will be made of you and your efforts (Hatch &
Cunliffe, 2006: 235 – original emphasis).
The importance of this advice cannot be overstated. The perception organisational culture is
something that can be applied (like a Band-Aid) to an organisation may well be like tilting at
windmills; a pernicious objective driving organisations to spend considerable effort and resources
on conflicting targets that may not, in the end, help to improve the working environment or make
workplaces healthy and safe. The use of organisational culture as a form of control has been
observed to have unexpected and negative outcomes for organisations. This is particularly so
where organisational restructuring has been accompanied by stated expectations of behavioural
8
change encouraged with sanctions, including increased surveillance, reduced autonomy and
decreased job security (Harris & Ogbonna, 2002; Ogbonna & Wilkinson, 2003).
Attempts to control and manage something as intangible and evasive as organisational culture
may well result in undesirable and unexpected outcomes. Organisational culture may not be able
to be managed at all but may be malleable—although this may be both difficult and ethically
questionable (Harris & Ogbonna, 2002). Woodall’s two-stage prescription for ethical cultural
change in organisations still rings true 15 years on, and though lengthy, is worth quoting here:
First, if organizational management consciously wishes to adopt values that proclaim its purpose,
then it has to enable an internal dialogue to take place over what these should be and their
relationship to wider social values … individual loyalty to the organisation needs to be tempered
with loyalty to family and immediate work group, and above all the organisation’s commitment to the
individual. Culture management that disregards this in favour of a greedy demand for a one-sided
commitment is a denial of the very thing it pursues—a sense of community and belonging. The
requirement for greater effort needs to be met with equitable treatment, not only in terms of
rewards, but in terms of what might be the spin-offs for family and personal life, colleagues and the
burdens for a society at large. Second, organisational management has to create the conditions in
which such a dialogue can take place. Honesty in vision and direction, openness and fairness in
dealings with employees, tolerance of deviant views and security—all of these could be possible,
even though the organisation is constrained by concerns for share price, public image, and
confidentiality in relation to competitors. However, without this any culture change has a hollow ring.
Both of these requirements appear to be very elusive in the current situation of managing corporate
culture change … culture management might not [only] be an exercise in deception and
manipulation, but a self-deluding fantasy too (Woodall, 1996).
As Antonsen (2010) suggests, “organizational cultures are produced locally, and … managers
cannot expect to be able to shape organisational culture at their discretion”. Instead an approach
to organisational culture and organisational change that accepts there will be varied points of
view, conflict, and confusion in an organisation provides a significant, but achievable challenge to
managers. By allowing the variety of opinion to persist and develop in an organisation, many
points of view can be effectively tapped to deal with problems, challenges and daily organisational
frustrations. There is a greater likelihood the resulting decisions will be more full and capable of
implementation because they do not deny difference, but incorporate it (Weisbord, 1987).
SAFETY CULTURE AND CLIMATE
The field of culture and climate in organisations is further muddied by the terms ‘safety culture’
and ‘safety climate’. Safety climate was first proposed in 1980 as a concept measured by a 40item survey to reflect “employees’ perceptions about the relative importance of safe conduct in
their occupational behaviour” (Zohar, 1980). The term ‘safety culture’ emerged in 1986 in
response to the Chernobyl disaster (International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 1986) with
expansion on the subject in later years. The IAEA suggested, “ultimately…the effectiveness of the
organization’s safety culture should be reflected in the performance of the facility” (Sorensen,
2002). These initiatives have led to the development of a new field of enquiry, arguably unique in
the literature on organisations.
While organisational subcultures have been well theorised and studied, as outlined above they
refer to groups of people in organisations that have in common traits or operational objectives,
rather than areas of management concern. No other domain of organisational life has been
identified as having a cultural life of its own. Given the importance to organisational survival of
areas such as finance, marketing, operations, and even human resources, why have we not seen
a similar level of enquiry and the development of literature on the culture of these domains? This
is indeed a curious phenomenon.
9
Despite these reservations, there is a growing body of literature about safety culture and safety
climate with assertions about what they are, the differences between the two (Zhang, Wiegmann,
von Thaden, Sharma, & Mitchell, 2002), the relationship between the two (Teo & Feng, 2009),
how they might be measured or assessed (Shannon & Norman, 2009), their relationship to
behaviour and how ‘safety culture might be acquired’ (Hudson, 1999), and what impact they might
have on work health and safety (S. Clarke, 2006; Hale & Hovden, 1998). Zhang et al (2002)
acknowledged the degree of chaos in the concepts of safety culture and safety climate and
proposed a common nomenclature and a series of hybrid definitions in an attempt to move the
field forward:
Safety culture: The enduring value and priority placed on worker and public safety by everyone in
every group at every level of an organization. It refers to the extent to which individuals and groups
will commit to personal responsibility for safety; act to preserve, enhance and communicate safety
concerns; strive to actively learn, adapt and modify (both individual and organisational) behaviour
based on lessons learned from mistakes; and be rewarded in a manner consistent with these
values.
Safety climate: The temporal state measure of safety culture, subject to commonalities among
individual perceptions of the organization. It is therefore situationally based, refers to the perceived
state of safety at a particular place at a particular time, is relatively unstable, and subject to change
depending on the features of the current environment or prevailing conditions. (Zhang, et al., 2002).
Zhang et al’s proposed definitions were based on a review of the literature that assumed safety
culture/climate to be instrumental (functionalist) in nature, unified and shared. But there are other
views; safety culture/climate remains contested constructs (Guldenmund 2000). Indeed, the
discussion about forms of organisational culture/climate, discussed above is mirrored in the safety
culture/climate literature (Richter & Koch, 2004; Sorensen, 2002).
Recently researchers have increasingly called for a new view of safety culture that locates it within
the literature on organisational culture (Bentley & Tappin, 2010; Nævestad, 2008; Silbey, 2009;
Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009). Such approaches treat culture as process rather than as an entity,
taking an holistic look at what happens in organisations (Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009). The
importance of maintaining many perspectives and incorporating reflective practice in the
examination of safety culture is advocated by Nævestad (2008) who dismissed the idea of a
unitary view of safety culture. More recently he framed his discussion in terms of a functionalist
approach to safety culture (something the organisation has) versus an interpretive approach
(something the organisation is) and suggested that lessons about safety culture could be drawn
from socio-technical systems and the experience of high reliability organisations (Nævestad,
2009). Silbey asserts an instrumental view of culture has little value in the prevention of accidents
and exhorts researchers to “explore the features of complex systems” that have been left out of
the discussions on safety culture. These include explorations of difference in organisations, of
conflict, matters to do with power, influence and authority, and how competing interests in
organisations might have legitimacy and the need to co-exist (Antonsen, 2009; Silbey, 2009).
In the last decade or so safety culture/climate has been used as a diagnosis to describe incident
causation; in common parlance, that is, ‘… the incident was caused by a poor safety culture’. This
appears to be the newest form of short-hand labelling of a diagnosis that in earlier times may
have been ‘human error’, ‘unsafe behaviour’, or ‘careless worker’. Most crucially it is unhelpful in
determining corrective actions as it does not identify the root cause (Rosness, 2003). Rather than
holistically investigating the cultural aspects of the organisation, behavioural responses have
developed. Behaviour-based safety approaches encourage a behaviourist focus on individuals
(usually the lowest workers in the hierarchy) and Pavlovian or Skinnerian attempts to change
attitudes and therefore observable behaviour through reward and punishment. There are many
conditions for success of behaviour-based safety not the least of which is the reliance on a “view
of humans as controlled by external rewards, and free will as a figment of our imagination”
(Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009). Even a cursory reflection on human behaviour reveals more
10
complex motivators than instinctual or learned responses to rewards such as personal and
cultural moral codes, personal goals and self-investment, altruism, and the desire to care for
others (Leontiev, 2008; Maslow, 1943; Neher, 1991).
The need for a more balanced approach to the concept of culture is well-argued by Tharaldsen
and Haukelid (2009) who observe much of the literature on safety culture is instrumental and
behavioural in nature and does not address important cultural perspectives at all well. They
contend while a behavioural approach may provide part of the work health and safety story, it
should not be considered on its own and out of context. Giving behaviour the spotlight means the
overall view of an organisation’s culture is diminished and much important information, especially
tacit and cultural information, is left in the dark. Reliance on a behaviour-based approach is
necessarily superficial because it ignores the higher-level functions and drivers of behaviour.
Instead a more rounded approach is necessary to be meaningful and valid and to inform effective
interventions.
The investigation of organisational culture and the place of work health and safety must be
diverse and holistic if it is to be useful in providing a clear picture enabling the development of
interventions to improve the workplace. In particular, the distribution of power and influence needs
to be considered because “some people have more influence than others, and some are closer to
the risk than others: safety and risk are not equally distributed” (Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009).
The narrow focus of the behaviour-based safety approach cannot provide an accurate
assessment of the state of work health and safety and organisational culture. This requires a mix
of quantitative (or technological) methods and qualitative (or organic) methods that take into
account the diversity of the whole organisation.
Tharaldsen and Haukelid postulate a four-field model (see Figure 1) that suggests a balance in
the different ways of dealing with work health and safety incorporating behavioural approaches,
cultural approaches, tacit (implied but not expressed) knowledge, and explicit and visible events
(Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009). They acknowledge the model is likely to be a “coarse
simplification” where there is overlap between the fields, but they offer it as a step towards clarity
and to provide an overarching context for cultural understanding.
Learning,
Socialisation
Symbols,
Images
Acts of
habits
Single acts
and events
Explicit
Visible
Tacit
Hidden
Cultural
Behavioural
Figure 1. A balanced approach to safety (Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009).
The most recognisable field is the explicit behavioural. This is the field where observable
behaviours that can be counted lie; such as those that behaviour-based safety is concerned with.
For example, failure to use personal protective equipment where it is demanded by rules and
procedures, or failure to use equipment as specified in the rules. However, risks associated with
long latency, unpredictability or invisibility, such as chemical exposures and psychosocial risks,
can be missed. Changes in these areas may be difficult to measure, or the relationship between
cause and effect may be less evident than is the case with simple, observable behaviours.
Nonetheless, such risks may be of great significance for people’s health and wellbeing in the long
term, and may have significant consequences for the organisation.
The factors operating in the background but ultimately leading to the formation of observable
habits fall into the tacit behavioural field. These include well-intentioned incentive programs
designed to improve safety that can have unintended consequences leading to habitual
behaviours with long-term effects. For example, tying incentives to low injury rates might be
sincerely intended to produce a safe working environment but is more likely to lead to counter11
productive, habitual under or non-reporting. These background factors need to be understood if
effective interventions to improve work health and safety are to be developed and implemented.
Processes of power and influence are embodied in the tacit cultural field. Unequal power
distribution, the influential individuals at all levels in the organisation, and the uneven distribution
of risk across the organisation may all impact on the way changes in work health and safety are
seen and managed. Change in this field may take time to learn and socialisation may take time to
take effect, so-called “slow change”, but eventually they become embodied in “the way we do
things”. Because they become deeply embedded in the organisation’s functioning, they can be
very powerful influences. For example, a work health and safety Committee concerned work
health and safety is poorly communicated may agree to introduce a new rule for communication
between employees and work health and safety committee members involving short ‘work health
and safety exchanges’ with small groups of people throughout the organisation immediately after
lunch on the last Friday of the month. For the first few months some people forget about the rule
and the meeting, but within a year the time and date is institutionalised and people muster at their
meeting place at the appointed time without reminder, and use the time effectively.
The observable symbols of culture are found in the explicit cultural field. Statements of vision and
values, cartoon characters acting as mascots for safety, newsletters, logos, procedures and
policies that are influenced by organisational culture sit neatly in this field. These explicit cultural
symbols provide the flavour of the organisation and can dictate and guide behaviour. For
example, a cultural analysis would focus on the commitment of managers to work health and
safety which is accepted as being an important influence on organisational culture. Managers
modelling appropriate behaviours, determining decisions that are in accordance with the
company’s stated vision and values, and actually doing what they say they should do would
demonstrate this.
The application of this four-field model to organisational investigation and evaluation would go
some way to improving the development of interventions for organisational change. However, it is
not a recipe for ‘managing safety culture’. The difficulties in managing organisational
culture/climate, discussed above, are mirrored in the domain of managing safety culture/climate.
Here we are warned about the importance of bringing the focus back to improving the workplace,
rather than engaging in continual re-assessments that do not lead to action (Silbey, 2009). There
is also the suggestion that managers should be “a little more modest” in their attempts to manage
safety culture (Haukelid, 2008).
The long history of the concept of organisational culture and the research that surrounds it has
reached a cautious point in its development. The advice we have seen earlier exhorts us to
consider organisational culture as providing the context and meaning for decision-making instead
of trying to manage culture. Accepting and working with the variety of views that might exist in the
organisation is likely to provide effective and predictable outcomes because the differences are
not ignored, but are part of the solution.
In contrast we see that the 30 years of literature on safety culture/climate remains fragmented and
disconnected. What can the proponents of safety culture/climate learn from the larger research
base on organisational culture? What could be learned by examining the place work health and
safety has in organisational culture and the actions necessary to improve work health and safety,
instead of continuing to investigate safety culture/climate? The former would grow from a world
view of organisations where work health and safety is part of organisational life, rather than the
view that work health and safety is a separate, specialist area with a life of its own. What impact
on work health and safety might there be in reframing the organisational culture literature in this
way?
Safety culture as a “solution”
The uncertain nature of the concept of safety culture/climate is clearly evident. It is also clear even
with the best will in the world the idea an organisation can manage safety culture can be
12
challenged. At best organisations may find that effort and budgets spent on this endeavour have
limited impact but may demonstrate where attention needs to be placed. At worst the impact of
attempts to fix safety culture may have unexpected negative outcomes or may direct firms away
from controlling known risks at source; it maybe an ironic form of goal displacement. In a sense,
behavioural norms and expectations are used as a proxy for ‘culture’. This might be reasonable
given it’s hard to measure what can’t be observed, but do these observable features really
represent culture? How much is this effort an example of goal displacement; that is, putting the
effort in to measure culture instead of rethinking the design of equipment (Rollenhagen, 2010).
The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides a simple summary of the stance that the UK
regulator has taken on safety culture. There, safety culture is seen as a subset of organisational
culture and this broader focus is recommended. Organisational culture is regarded as a means of
capturing the attention of managers and workers alike so that it provides a framework for advice.
This is a practical way to use a contested area to help move the UK towards the goal of building
healthy and safe workplaces. Some useful advice is found on the website that is presented in
accessible language (Health and Safety Executive, 2011). It reminds the reader:






embarking on culture change is a lengthy process,
“talking to your workforce” or using the HSE’s own readily available tools are a good
starting place to investigate the phenomenon
any survey method is only a starting point and taking action and giving feedback are
actually necessary
a step-wise approach with a focus on particular dimensions of culture such as
leadership, competence or communication can be an effective means of engendering
change
it is critical to have a whole-of-organisation focus, not only the workforce but also senior
management should be prepared to be “examined and challenged” and
suitably skilled and independent third parties can help provide guidance but it is
“important to retain ownership of the process and work in partnership, and acquire the
knowledge and skills to continue the work independently” (Health and Safety Executive,
2011).
An evidence base
Safety culture/climate is an unusual domain in that the literature is largely empirically based,
rather than theoretically based. So the examples of research on safety culture conducted in
organisations are growing rapidly. However as Tharaldsen and Haukelid (2009) observe, the
research is largely conducted from an instrumental standpoint, that is, starting from the premise
safety culture is something that can be applied to fix organisations. Such research is limited in
value because it is typically based on a narrow view of safety culture. It tends to rely on the
statistical analysis of surveys used to determine key dimensions of safety culture with a
subsequent rearrangement of items and re-labelling of dimensions but often with limited
information about the impact the work has on health and safety (DeJoy, Gershon, & Schaffer,
2004; Fernández-Muñiz, et al., 2007; Isaksen, et al., 2001; Torp & Grøgaard, 2009). Instead they
recommend a multi-method approach to determine interventions to improve organisations—and
the same advice might be applied to research. As they suggest, such an approach gives
…a fuller picture of why rules and procedures are not always followed, or why well-intended
incentives might have paradoxical, undesired consequences (Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009: original
emphasis).
Silbey agrees and goes on to describe safety culture as “a supplement, the detritus of social
transactions” that is so elusive that it does not and cannot provide a clear explanation for failures
in technological systems. The inevitable result is that instrumental research leads to and
13
encourages explanations of operator error and unsafe behaviour and the scapegoating that
accompanies this (Silbey, 2009).
The conflation of safety culture with behavioural modification through behaviour-based safety is a
more recent outcome of the rise of the importance of safety culture (Tharaldsen & Haukelid,
2009). There is a dearth of research that reinforces the complex anthropological, sociological and
social psychological views of culture as it pertains to work health and safety. There is room for
further theorising that finds a place for work health and safety in the more general organisational
culture literature. Such an approach would have the added benefit of helping to push work health
and safety into mainstream management decision-making rather than encouraging further
specialisation.
Typologies of culture and organisational change
The concept of safety culture is open to interpretation so theoretical models and typologies are
useful to guide and systematise thinking. Blewett and Shaw’s (2001) model of reactive,
transitional and proactive organisations, and Westrum’s (2004) typology of pathological,
bureaucratic and generative organisations were introduced above. Each model was grounded in
observations of organisations and proposed as a means of differentiating between broad classes
of organisations based on identifiable cultural characteristics that contributed to safe workplaces.
These models are descriptive, not directive in nature. While deficiencies in key features in an
organisation might suggest interventions, these authors suggest such conclusions should be
treated with caution because the relationships between cultural characteristics and safe
workplaces are complex and contextual.
Reason added to Westrum’s model with two additions to the typology (Reason, 1997), while
Hudson et al have added further to this by proposing an “evolutionary framework” (Hudson, 1999,
2007; Lawrie, Parker, & Hudson, 2006; Parker, Lawrie, & Hudson, 2006), a development and
maturation model of safety culture that identifies key features at each of six steps in a linear
progression from pathological to generative. A pathological culture cares less about safety and
more about being caught. The organisation moves to a reactive culture in response to incidents
and becomes calculative (or bureaucratic) when it is rule-bound and follows set processes for
safety, but in a calculated rather than reflective manner. The organisation becomes a proactive
culture when it starts to anticipate problems and deal with them before they arise, while a
generative culture is innovative, not rule-bound, and incorporates safety in its total operation. The
model was fleshed out following interviews with 26 company executives in the oil and gas industry
(Parker, et al., 2006). The model provides a useful description of different organisational cultures
but has some failings in its application. It relies on a unitary approach to organisational culture and
does not consider the influence of competing sub-cultures that exist in organisations. It may have
the appearance of validity from the perspective of executive management but its validity for others
in the organisational hierarchy has not been tested. The model is used to provide a prescription
for organisational change based on an instrumental view of safety culture (Hudson, 2007) that is
currently under challenge.
Hudson et al’s prescription of an organisational change ladder that delivers “a safety culture” is in
sharp contrast to Dawson’s (2003) observations of organisational change—far less a ladder more
like a snakes and ladders game, complete with uncertainty and unexpected movements in
different directions. Dawson views organisational change as a non-linear process that does not
lend itself to prescriptive recipes for change and advises readers to broaden their awareness of
the complexity of the change process (Dawson, 2003: 173). He stresses there is “nothing so
impracticable as a packaged, prescriptive, linear change initiative” (Dawson, 2003: 175). Ten
practical lessons emerge from his extensive work in organisations that can be applied to the place
of work health and safety in organisational culture. In summary:
1. There are no simple solutions or prescriptions for organisational change. It is important
to be aware of the limitations of step-wise organisational change packages.
14
2. Change strategies should be sensitive to organisational politics and the context in
which change is to take place.
3. Major change takes time, requires planning and revisions of plans. It is unlikely to be
smooth sailing.
4. Different people and groups in the organisation experience change differently. It is
important to continually reflect and question assumptions along the way.
5. Learn from the diversity of views in the organisation and from varied experiences—do
not rely on stories of successful change to direct decisions.
6. Provide adequate training to employees so their skills match the requirements of
change initiatives.
7. Have consistent and ongoing communication with employees and be aware of the
politics of communication.
8. Be aware of the changing external and internal context for change and modify the
process in response to the context.
9. Organisational change is a political process and this shapes the way change occurs as
well as the results.
10. Organisational change is not static, instead the “substance, context and politics of
change interlock and overlap over time” (Dawson, 2003: 173-175).
Models of safety culture may be valuable tools helping organisations ask the right questions and
help to direct reflection on the way the organisation operates. This may help determine where to
put effort and how to place priorities for action. However, there is a need to be cautious about the
mechanistic application of such models because while they may provide useful descriptors, there
is little evidence that they can be used as prescriptions that lead to better organisational health.
Assessing (measuring) culture
Why measure culture? If as so many authors assert, culture is the basis of organisational
performance, then the strategic reason for measuring culture will be to illuminate our
understanding and improve performance. But perhaps the first question to pose should be, ‘is
culture measurable?’ Those authors who take the instrumental view of culture see a link between
values, attitudes and behaviours, and health and safety outcomes. But the mechanism of this link,
how this is operationalised, is less clear.
Safety culture/climate is most frequently measured in terms of individual responses to attitude
surveys; so many instruments to measure safety culture have been developed. Constructs have
been named and defined with various subtle variations and rearrangement of items, surveys
administered, measurements taken, validation asserted and the construct is then regarded as
stable—that is, something that is likely to occur in a similar fashion in all organisations. As a result
developing, testing and validating measurement instruments for safety culture/climate dominate
the literature (Silbey, 2009) and are a common tool of trade for consultants and researchers alike.
But does this individualised approach to the measurement of culture actually measure culture?
For the purposes of this present discussion, we should also ask, “can surveys contribute to
making workplaces healthy and safe?” Can they, for instance, reliably identify where
improvements can be made and what the interventions should be that might lead to
improvement? The same warnings, outlined in the previous section, about reliance on surveys to
provide evidence about safety culture for research and theoretical development apply here. Using
surveys alone is flawed because it only gives part of the story and from one perspective.
Using a multi-method model to “decipher” the essence of an organisation is likely to give more
reliable and valid data about organisational culture, if only because varied views are accessed
(Schein, 2010: 177-193) and it prevents over-simplification (Bellot, 2011; Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001).
15
The UK Health and Safety Executive recommends that employee attitude surveys should not be
the sole method of data collection because they fail to identify the mechanisms and systems that
shape the organisation (Health and Safety Executive, 2005). Instead, data from a combination of
qualitative methods (observations, focus groups, interviews, document analysis, historical
information reviews and case studies) and quantitative methods (surveys and questionnaires)
should be collected and triangulated. Assessments should be made across the organisation,
within and across departments and teams and covering different organisational levels (Health and
Safety Executive, 2002). An evaluative approach such as this can provide the background data
that informs the participative development of interventions to improve work health and safety
(Blewett & Shaw, 2008).
Whatever methods are used to collect and analyse data, the relationship of the assessor to the
organisation will play a role in the nature of the assessment. For example, an evaluator from the
regulator, a consultant engaged to help the organisation, and an internal organisational
development officer will each have different approaches, may be viewed differently by
organisational participants, may access different data, and may interpret those data differently.
On top of this, the academic background of the assessor may play a role in both data collection
and interpretation of the data; for example an organisational psychologist, anthropologist,
sociologist and management scientist will each come to the task with a different frame of
reference.
Regardless of who is engaged in assessing organisational culture, there are ethical
considerations that should not be ignored. These are principally about making public what is
normally private, and the potential to do harm to individuals and organisations in the process. The
risks will vary with the nature of the assessment, the purpose of the assessment and the assessor
themselves. Schein (2010: 186-191) provides a useful discussion of ethical considerations in
cultural assessment for the insider and outsider to take into account. The “soft guidelines” that
accompany the use of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)1 is a useful set of
working rules. These 10 principles were established to encourage ethical use of the COPSOQ in
workplaces and could be adapted to culture surveys by simply substituting the words
‘organisational culture’ for ‘psychosocial work environment’:
1. Never start a survey of the psychosocial work environment unless there is a clear
intention of taking action if indicated.
2. Answering the questionnaire is voluntary, but a response rate below 60% is
unsatisfactory and a sign of poor psychological climate at the workplace.
3. All respondents are anonymous, if scores are calculated for groups of less than 15
persons, all group members should give their active consent.
4. All employees have the right to see and discuss the results.
5. Management as well as supervisors and workers should participate and be committed
during the whole process.
6. It is important to distinguish between basic conditions of work that are “part of the job”
and factors that could be changed. Do not try to change what cannot be changed and
do not accept what should be changed.
1
This survey instrument is used internationally to examine the psychosocial working
environment and has many constructs in common with safety culture/climate survey
instruments. But it is the soft guidelines, rather than the questionnaire content, that are
considered here.
16
7. There are no standard solutions to the problems. Solutions should be developed locally
and integrated in the other activities of the organisation aiming at increased productivity
and better quality.
8. If interventions are made, it is a good idea to repeat the survey after 1-2 years in order
to see if the intended improvements have occurred.
9. Many workplaces will benefit from surveys with regular intervals as part of the overall
concept of the “learning organisation” and “development work”.
10. The survey results should be seen as a tool for dialogue and development—not as a
‘grade book’ (Kristensen, 2011).
There are gaps in the knowledge when it comes to cultural approaches to work health and safety.
The tools and methods used to assess organisational culture and work health and safety are
evolving with our understanding of the area and more needs to be done in this domain. For
example, assumptions about the relationship between cultural aspects of an organisation and
observable safety behaviours have not been validated with longitudinal data.
BARRIERS AND ENABLERS OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
This paper has ranged widely across the literature on culture in organisations and identifies areas
where organisational culture might contribute to enhancing healthy and safe working
environments. So what are the key barriers to and enablers of an organisational culture that
supports and enhances a healthy and safe working environment? There is a wide range of
dimensions of organisational culture that appear in the empirical and theoretical literature that are
said to contribute to work health and safety. For example the UK Health and Safety Executive
suggest that safety culture is influenced by:






management commitment and style
employee involvement
training and competence
communication
compliance with procedures, and
organisational learning (Health and Safety Executive, 2011).
Engineering a ‘just culture’ where people are able to report error and be treated with respect,
rather than sanctions, was identified early in the literature as contributing to positive organisational
culture—although the difficulties in achieving this are significant (Reason, 1998). Recent
Australian research in the NSW mining industry, Digging Deeper (Shaw et al. 2008), provided
empirical evidence of the cultural dimensions most closely associated with good work health and
safety management in the Australian context, namely:






mindfulness [as described by (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001)]
workgroup cohesion
trust in management
organisational justice
supervisor support, and
role clarity (Shaw et al., 2008).
These identified features are enablers if actioned well, but can be barriers to effective work health
and safety if not addressed well. This work built on earlier work that described the aetiology of
incidents as a flow from organisational culture (Atmosphere) to incidents (Targets), the ASET
process. In this model the nature of organisational culture determines the nature of organisational
systems that determine exposures in the workplace that ultimately lead to incidents:
17
Atmosphere 
Systems 
Exposure 
Targets
e.g. vision, values,
common goals
e.g. training,
purchasing policy,
hazard policies
and procedures,
maintenance
procedures,
information
systems
e.g. state of
equipment,
conditions in the
workplace,
behaviour
e.g. incidents,
near-misses, lost
time injuries
Figure 2. The ASET process (Blewett & Shaw, 1995)
Attention to upstream systemic and cultural failures is likely to lead to sustained improvement in
exposure and therefore incidents.
Other researchers have identified unintended consequences from poorly executed cultural
change programs. For example an attempt to increase workers’ responsibility for work health and
safety led to “worker alienation, shame with regard to injuries, complacency, and fear of
bureaucratic processes” in a high-tech workplace. The authors concluded, “some efforts to create
safety culture in the workplace may unintentionally undermine the goal of manufacturing safety”
(Edwards & Jabs, 2009). Similarly, in investigating a crisis in the nuclear industry, the cultural
construct of “staff motivation to be involved in improvement activities” was found to be central to
managing work health and safety (Mengolini & Debarberis, 2010). The significant challenges
confronted by the competing demands of production and safety have also been identified as a
barrier to an organisational culture in which work health and safety is well managed. These were
identified in Digging Deeper, as well as in other studies (Walker, 2010).
STRATEGIC POLICY IMPLICATIONS FOR THE AUSTRALIAN STRATEGY
So what might be the implications of organisational culture to the Australian Strategy for work
health and safety? The following thoughts and observations are offered as an attempt to stimulate
a fresh examination of ‘safety culture/climate’ and how this construct might contribute to or detract
from improvements in work health and safety in Australia.
1. The idea of ‘safety culture/climate’ arguably alienates work health and safety from key
organisational decision-making by painting it as something for specialist activity rather
than as a key area of management’s strategic decision-making. In this way, safety
culture/climate may be work health and safety’s own worst enemy. If there is to be a
focus on culture in organisations, then examining ‘organisational culture’ more broadly
and holistically could be an effective means of improving work health and safety.
Adopting the language of ‘organisational culture’ would be a step in the right direction.
This approach may provide the opportunity to question more broadly the place that
work health and safety fits with other aspects of organisational operation, such as
production, finance, quality and environmental management, leading to work health and
safety improvement strategies.
2. The literature suggests the instrumental approach to safety culture is flawed in practice
and the concept of ‘managing culture’ may also be flawed. The muddied concepts of
‘safety culture’ and ‘safety climate’ as tools for fixing organisations may be a barrier to
improved work health and safety. Arguably, too much emphasis and research effort has
been placed on an instrumental view of safety culture/climate as means of improving
work health and safety. This has encouraged and contributed to the commodification of
the concept as the latest trend in organisational improvement. The risk of large-scale
goal displacement away from the control of risks at source to more ephemeral effort is
real.
18
3. The conflation of the construct of safety culture/climate with behavioural change is a
key barrier to healthy and safe working environments and has given behaviour-based
safety a foothold in the Australian work health and safety environment. The only way to
make a workplace healthy and safe is to take the action necessary to make it healthy
and safe; there is no substitute for action. Indeed, our regulatory framework supports
this view with the over-arching obligation by duty holders to provide safe workplaces
and safe systems of work. While the behaviour of individuals is part of the causation of
incidents it is by no means the only part, nor is it necessarily the major part. And it is not
only the behaviour of those lowest in the hierarchy (and most often with the greatest
exposure to risk) that makes its contribution. The strategic decision-making by
management is frequently given a diminished role in the behaviour-based safety
approach, but may have the greatest impact on work health and safety. The literature
suggests that behaviourist approaches to work health and safety employ a limited view
of human motivation and may have limited capacity to improve organisational culture.
4. Despite the uncertainty in the literature about ‘safety culture/climate’ as a construct, it is
regarded as critical to achieving high standards of work health and safety performance.
There is a considerable literature derived from multi-method research identifying the
features of organisational culture associated with work health and safety excellence
and providing guidance on strategies to create such organisational culture as discussed
above. Australian research is relevant to this country’s experience and strategic
direction. Empirical data from Australia and internationally indicate there are key
dimensions that can be identified in organisational cultures supporting and enhancing
healthy and safe working environments. Evidence of this nature can be the foundation
for strategies for regulators and policy makers aiming to influence improvements in
work health and safety at organisation and industry levels.
5. Contemporary research on the place work health and safety plays in organisational
culture is dominated by the instrumental view of culture and investigations that are most
often conducted through culture surveys. There is a role for multi-method research that
can provide a holistic view of organisations; research best undertaken by researchers
with competence in areas such as organisational anthropology, social psychology,
sociology and related disciplines. This could lead to a strategic improvement in the
research to fill gaps in the emerging areas of: work health and safety and organisational
culture and innovation, power and influence, leadership, organisational change, and
organisations as societies or communities of practice.
6. There is a community of work health and safety consultants working to assist
organisations in Australia. Some have significant expertise and make important
discoveries during the course of their work in organisations. At the same time there is a
dearth of intervention research nationally and internationally; research that potentially
can provide important insights into what works and doesn’t work in organisations. It is
not only researchers who have the capacity to be analytical about their experiences
and findings. There is a strategically valuable opportunity to capture the applied
knowledge and experience of worthy consultants and place it in the peer-reviewed
literature for wider examination and dissemination. At present, commercial
confidentiality aside, the opportunity cost of writing for academic journals is prohibitive
for most consultants, but if this is not encouraged, their work is effectively lost to the
community.
7. Much of the literature and research effort on safety culture has focused on traditional
organisations with stable workforces. Given changes in the Australian economy and
labour market, research needs to include non-traditional organisations that rely on
outsourcing, contracting, contingent workforces and other non-traditional work
practices.
19
CONCLUSION
The construct of safety culture/climate has gained a large following in the literature and in
industry. The construct is open for criticism and literature is beginning to emerge that sees the
flaws in the construct, its commodification, and its instrumental application in industry. There are
important warnings for those who are concerned about the future of work health and safety in
Australia.
The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy by Safe Work Australia is an important
opportunity. A strategy that encourages a broad examination of organisational culture and the part
work health and safety plays in it will necessarily encourage reflective, holistic, multi-method
approaches to the assessment of organisations and their cultures. Instead of relying on surveys to
provide all the evidence of cultural performance they would be just one tool in the box of
organisational evaluation tools. Using a holistic approach, simple explicit behaviours would no
longer be the prime focus of organisational culture evaluation but would be viewed in the context
of the political and structural elements of the organisation, taking into account the differentials in
power, influence and risk. Linear prescriptions for organisational change would lose their
attraction and organisations would embrace uncertainty and the potential for innovation. Such a
strategy would also encourage participative approaches for the development of interventions,
rather than the application of off-the-shelf solutions, including behaviourist approaches. We are at
a point where clever management of work health and safety in the context of organisational
culture could make a significant difference to Australian workplaces and the lives of working
women and men. It is a time to strategically consider “managing culturally” rather than “managing
culture”.
20
REFERENCES
Al-Shammari, M. M. (1992). Organizational climate. Leadership & Organization Development
Journal, 13(6), 30-32.
Andriopoulos, C., & Dawson, P. (2009). Managing change, creativity and innovation. London:
Sage Publications Inc.
Antonsen, S. (2009). Safety culture and the issue of power. Safety Science, 47(183–191).
Asif, F. (2011). Estimating the impact of Denison's (1996), “What is the difference between
organizational culture and organizational climate? A native's point of view on a decade of
paradigm wars”. Journal of Business Research, 64, 454–459.
Aydin, B., & Ceylan, A. (2009). The role of organizational culture on effectiveness. Ekonomie a
Management, 3, 33-49.
Bellot, J. (2011). Defining and Assessing Organizational Culture. Nursing Forum, 46(1), 29-37.
Bentley, T., & Tappin, D. (2010). Incorporating organisational safety culture within ergonomics
practice. Ergonomics, 53(10), 1167 — 1174.
Blewett, V., & Shaw, A. (1995). Integrating OHS Through Self-Managed Teams. Journal Of
Occupational Health and Safety — Australia and New Zealand, 11(1), 15-19.
Blewett, V., & Shaw, A. (2001). Small – healthy and safe? Implications of changing work
organisation and reward systems for the OHS of women workers in small to medium
enterprises. (Vol. No. 42). Sydney: University of New South Wales: Industrial Relations
Research Centre.
Blewett, V., & Shaw, A. (2008, 11-13 August 2008). Future Inquiry: participatory ergonomics at
work. Proceedings of the Nordic Ergonomics Society Conference, Ergonomics is a
Lifestyle, Reykjavík, Iceland.
Bryson, J. (2008). Dominant, emergent, and residual culture: the dynamics of organizational
change. Journal of Organizational Change, 21(6), 743-757.
Clarke, S. (2006). The relationship between safety climate and safety performance: A metaanalytic review. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 11(4), 315–327.
Clarke, S. P. (2006). Organizational Climate and Culture Factors Annual Review of Nursing
Research (Vol. 24, pp. 255-327).
Dawson, P. (2003). Understanding organizational change: The contemporary experience of
people at work. London: Sage.
DeJoy, D. M., Gershon, R., R.M., & Schaffer, B. S. (2004). Safsety climate: Assessing
management and organizational influences on safety. Professional Safety(July), 50-57.
Denison, D. R. (1996). What is the difference between organizational culture and organizational
climate? A native's point of view on a decade of paradigm wars. Academy of Management
Review, 21(3), 619-654.
Edwards, M., & Jabs, L. B. (2009). When safety culture backfires: Unintended consequences of
half-shared governance in a high tech workplace. The Social Science Journal, 46, 707–
723.
Fernández-Muñiz, B., Montes-Peón, J. M., & Vázquez-Ordás, C. J. (2007). Safety culture:
Analysis of the causal relationships between its key dimensions. Journal of Safety
Research, 38, 627-641.
Hale, A. R., & Hovden, J. (1998). Management and culture: the third age of safety. A review of
approaches to organizational aspects of safety, health and environment. In A.-M. Feyer &
21
A. Williamson (Eds.), Occupational Injury: Risk, Prevention and Intervention (pp. 129-165).
London: Taylor & Francis.
Harris, L. C., & Ogbonna, E. (2002). The unintended consequences of culture interventions: A
study of unexpected outcomes British Journal of Management, 13, 31-49.
Hatch, M. J., & Cunliffe, A. L. (2006). Organization theory: modern, symbolic and postmodern
perspectives (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Haukelid, K. (2008). Theories of (safety) culture revisited—An anthropological approach. Safety
Science, 46, 413-426.
Health and Safety Executive. (2002). Evaluating the effectiveness of the Health and Safety
Executive's Health and Safety Climate Survey Tool. London: Health and Safety Executive.
Health and Safety Executive. (2005). A review of safety culture and safety climate literature for the
development of the safety culture inspection toolkit - RR367. London: Health and Safety
Executive, UK.
Health and Safety Executive. (2011). Organisational culture. Retrieved 3 June 2011, 2011, from
http://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/culture.htm
Hofstede, G. (1998). Identifying organizational subcultures: An empirical approach. Journal of
Management Studies, 35, 1-12.
Hopkins, A. (2002). Safety, culture, mindfulness and safe behaviour: Converging ideas. National
Research Centre for OHS Regulation, Working Paper 7.
Hudson, P. (1999, 1-2 December 1999). Safety Culture—Theory and Practice. Paper presented
at the Human Factors and Medicine Panel (HFM) Workshop: The Human Factor in
System Reliability—Is Human Performance Predictable?, Siena, Italy.
Hudson, P. (2007). Implementing a safety culture in a major multi-national. Safety Science, 45,
697-722.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). (1986). Summary report on the post-accident review
meeting on the Chernobyl accident. Vienna: International Safety Advisory Group.
Isaksen, S. G., Lauer, K. J., Ekvall, G., & Britz, A. (2001). Perceptions of the best and worst
climates for creativity: Preliminary validation evidence for the situational outlook
questionnaire. Creativity Research Journal, 13(2), 171-184.
Kimbrough, R. L., & Componation, P. J. (2009). The relationship between organizational culture
and enterprise risk management. Engineering Management Journal, 21(21), 18-26.
Kristensen, T. S. (2011). The "Soft Guidelines" of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire
(COPSOQ): How to go from survey to action. Retrieved 6 June 2011, 2011, from
http://www.arbejdsmiljoforskning.dk/en/projekter/amis-spoergeskema-om-psykiskarbejdsmiljoe/baggrund
Lawrie, M., Parker, D., & Hudson, P. (2006). Investigating employee perceptions of a framework
of safety culture maturity. Safety Science, 44, 259-276.
Lok, P., & Crawford, J. (1999). The relationship between commitment and organizational culture,
subculture, leadership style and job satisfaction in organizational change and
development. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 20(7), 365-373.
Mengolini, A., & Debarberis, L. (2010). Lessons learnt from a crisis event: How to foster a sound
safety culture. Safety Science, In press, corrected proof. Available online 29 March 2010.
Meyerson, D., & Martin, J. (1987). Cultural change: An integration of three different views. Journal
of Management Studies, 24(6), 623-647.
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
22
Morrill, C. (2008). Culture and organization theory. The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science(619), 15-40.
Nævestad, T.-O. (2008). Safety cultural preconditions for organizational learning in high-risk
organizations. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 16(3), 154-163.
Nævestad, T.-O. (2009). Mapping research on culture and safety in high-risk organizations:
Arguments for a sociotechnical understanding of safety culture. Journal of Contingencies
and Crisis Management, 7(2), 126-136.
Nerdinger, F. W. (2008). Editorial: Employee Participation and Organizational Culture. Zeitschrift
für Personalforschung, 22(2), 107-110.
Ogbonna, E., & Wilkinson, B. (2003). The false promise of organizational culture change: A case
study of middle managers in grocery retailing. Journal of Management Studies, 40(5 July),
11551-11178.
Parker, D., Lawrie, M., & Hudson, P. (2006). A framework for understanding the development of
organisational safety culture. Safety Science, 44, 551-562.
Raz, A. E. (2007). Communities of practice or communities of coping? Employee compliance
among CSRs in Israeli call centres. The Learning Organization, 14(4), 375-387.
Reason, J. (1997). Managing the risk of organizational accidents. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing
Ltd.
Reason, J. (1998). Achieving a safe culture: Theory and practice. Work & Stress, 12(3), 293-306.
Richter, A., & Koch, C. (2004). Integration, Differentiation and Ambiguity in Safety Cultures. Safety
Science, 42, 703–722.
Rollenhagen, C. (2010). Can focus on safety culture become an excuse for not rethinking design
of technology? Safety Science, 48, 268–278.
Rosness, R. (2003). Safety culture yet another buzzword to hide our confusion. (9 June 2011),
downloaded pdf. Retrieved from http://www.sintef.no
Schein, E. H. (1990). Organizational culture. American Psychologist, 45(2), 109-119.
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th ed.). San Francissco: JosseyBass.
Shannon, H. S., & Norman, G. R. (2009). Deriving the factor structure of safety climate scales.
Safety Science, 47, 327-329.
Shaw, A., Blewett, V., Stiller, L., Aickin, C., Cox, S., Ferguson, S., et al. (2008). Digging Deeper:
Wran Consultancy Project Final Report. Sydney: NSW Mine Safety Advisory Council.
Silbey, s. S. (2009). Taming Prometheus: Talk about safety and culture. Annual Review of
Sociology, 35, 41-69.
Sorensen, J. N. (2002). Safety culture: A survey of the state-of-the-art. Reliability Engineering and
System Safety, 76, 189-204.
Sun, S. (2008). Organizational culture and its themes. International Journal of Business and
Management, 3(12), 137-141.
Tagiuri, R., & Litwin, G. (Eds.). (1968). Organizational climate: Explorations of a concept. Boston:
Harvard Business School.
Taormina, R. J. (2008). Interrelating leadership behaviors, organizational socialization, and
organizational culture. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 29(1), 85-102.
Teo, E. A.-L., & Feng, Y. (2009). The role of safety climate in predicting safety culture on
construction sites. Architectural Science Review, 52(1), 5-16.
23
Tharaldsen, J.-E., & Haukelid, K. (2009). Culture and behavioural perspectives on safety—
towards a balanced approach. Journal of Risk Research, 12(3-4), 375-388.
Torp, S., & Grøgaard, J. (2009). The influence of individual and contextual work factors on
workers’ compliance with health and safety routines. Applied Ergonomics, 40, 185-193.
Tsoukas, H., & Hatch, M. J. (2001). Complex thinking, complex practice: The case for a narrative
approach to organizational complexity. Human Relations, 54(8), 979-1013.
Walker, G. W. (2010). A safety counterculture challenge to a ‘‘safety climate”. Safety Science, 48,
333-341.
Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2001). Managing the unexpected: assuring high reliability in an
age of complexity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Weisbord, M. (1987). Productive workplaces revisited: Dignity, meaning, and community in the
21st Century. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Westrum, R. (2004). A typology of organisational cultures. Quality and Safety in Health Care,
13(Suppl II), ii22–ii27.
Weyman, A., Pidgeon, N., Jeffcott, S., & Walls, J. (2006). Organisational dynamics and safety
culture in UK train operating companies - RR421. London: Health and Safety Executive,
UK.
Woodall, J. (1996). Managing culture change: can it ever be ethical? Personnel Review, 25(6),
26-40.
Yahyagil, M. (2006). The fit between the concepts of organizational culture and climate. Journal of
Organizational Culture, Communication and Conflict, 10(2), 77-104.
Zhang, H., Wiegmann, D. A., von Thaden, T. L., Sharma, G., & Mitchell, A. A. (2002). Safety
culture: A concept in chaos? Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica.
Zohar, D. (1980). Safety climate in industrial organizations: Theoretical and applied implications.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(1), 96-102.
Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2005). A Multilevel Model of Safety Climate: Cross-Level Relationships
Between Organization and Group-Level Climates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4),
616-628.
24