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Barry Kirwan - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Can we predict Safety Culture? Safety Culture analysis by agent-based organizational modelling
2020Co-Authors: Sybert H. Stroeve, Alexei Sharpanskykh, Barry KirwanAbstract:Safety Culture is broadly recognized as important for Air Traffic Management and various studies have addressed its characterization and assessment. Nevertheless, relations between Safety Culture and formal and informal organizational structures and processes are yet not well understood. We aim to improve the understanding of these relations by agent-based organizational modelling and thus provide a way for structured improvement of Safety Culture. This paper presents the key elements, results and validation of an agent-based organizational model for a particular Air Navigation Service Provider. To achieve valid predictions of Safety Culture indicators by the model, we needed input data from a Safety Culture survey questionnaire, and on this basis a sensitivity analysis provided valid results for important organizational factors influencing the Safety Culture indicators and related recommendations.
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Safety Culture and power: Interactions between perceptions of Safety Culture, organisational hierarchy, and national Culture
Safety Science, 2018Co-Authors: Morgan J. Tear, Tom W. Reader, Steven T. Shorrock, Barry KirwanAbstract:Practices that involve power dynamics are integral to maintaining organisational Safety (e.g. speaking-up, challenging poor behaviour, admitting error, communicating on Safety), and staff engagement in these is assumed to be shaped by perceptions of Safety Culture. These perceptions, in-turn, are associated with (1) positions within an organisational hierarchy (which makes power-related acts more or less threatening), and (2) societal values for power distance (e.g. challenging authority). With a sample of 13,573 of air traffic control staff (controllers, engineers, administrative, and management) from 21 national air traffic providers, we reconfirm the observation that managers perceive Safety Culture more positively than frontline staff (hypothesis 1), and that workers in countries with established values for hierarchy and power report Safety Culture as less positive than those from countries with low power distance (hypothesis 2). We then, for the first time, examine the interaction between these two factors, and establish that differences in Safety Culture perceptions between those higher in the hierarchy (management) and those lower in the hierarchy (air traffic controllers and administrative staff) are exacerbated by national contexts for large power distance (hypothesis 3). The study contributes to the literature by theorising the role of power in Safety Culture theory, and its influence upon Safety Culture perceptions. Moving forward, Safety Culture research and interventions may benefit from considering how power exists and manifests at the level of superior-subordinate dynamics.
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The Safety Culture stack – the next evolution of Safety Culture?
Safety and Reliability, 2018Co-Authors: Barry Kirwan, Tom W. Reader, Anam ParandAbstract:AbstractSince its inception following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, Safety Culture has impacted a number of industries, including nuclear power, the oil and gas industry, rail...
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The relationship between national Culture and Safety Culture: Implications for international Safety Culture assessments.
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 2015Co-Authors: Mark C. Noort, Tom W. Reader, Steven Shorrock, Barry KirwanAbstract:In this article, we examine the relationship between Safety Culture and national Culture, and the implications of this relationship for international Safety Culture assessments. Focussing on Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance (UA) index, a survey study of 13,616 Air Traffic Management employees in 21 European countries found a negative association between Safety Culture and national norm data for UA. This is theorized to reflect the influence of national tendencies for UA upon attitudes and practices for managing Safety (e.g., anxiety on risk; reliance on protocols; concerns over reporting incidents; openness to different perspectives). The relationship between UA and Safety Culture is likely to have implications for international Safety Culture assessments. Specifically, benchmarking exercises will consistently indicate Safety management within organizations in high UA countries to be poorer than low UA countries due to the influence of national Culture upon Safety practices, which may limit opportunities for identifying and sharing best practice. We propose the use of Safety Culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores to statistically adjust for the influence of UA upon Safety Culture data, and to support the identification of Safety practices effective and particular to low or high UA Cultures. Practitioner points National cultural tendencies for uncertainty avoidance (UA) are negatively associated with Safety Culture. This indicates that employee Safety-related attitudes and practices may be influenced by national Culture, and thus factors outside the direct control of organizational management. International Safety Culture assessments should attempt to determine the influence of national Culture upon Safety Culture in order that benchmarking exercises compare aspects of Safety management and not national Culture. Safety Culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores provide a potential way to do this, and can facilitate the identification of best practice within countries operating in a low or high UA cultural cluster.
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Safety sans Frontières: an international Safety Culture model
Risk Analysis, 2015Co-Authors: Tom W. Reader, Mark C. Noort, Steven Shorrock, Barry KirwanAbstract:The management of Safety Culture in international and culturally diverse organizations is a concern for many high-risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of Safety Culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of Safety Culture to global environments. We examined (i) whether Safety Culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and (ii) if there is an association between Safety Culture and national Culture. The psychometric properties of a Safety Culture model developed for the air traffic management (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when Safety Culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, Safety Culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country-level data on Hofstede's five national Culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation). MANOVAs indicated Safety Culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organizational Safety Culture, with significant implications for Safety Culture theory and practice.
Nicholas Frank Pidgeon - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Safety Culture key theoretical issues
Work & Stress, 1998Co-Authors: Nicholas Frank PidgeonAbstract:Abstract The organizational preconditions to major systems failures are seen as increasingly important for risk management. However, existing empirical attempts to study Safety Culture and its relationship to organizational outcomes have remained fragmented and underspecified in theoretical terms. This is despite the existence of a number of well-developed theories of organizationally induced accidents and disasters. Reasons for this disfunction of theory and practice are first considered. The paper then outlines four key theoretical questions for Safety Culture researchers: the fact that Culture acts simultaneously as a precondition both for safe operations and for the oversight of incubating hazards (the paradox of ‘Safety’ Culture); the challenge of dealing with complex and ill-structured hazardous situations where decision makers are faced with deep forms of uncertainty represented by incompleteness of knowledge or ignorance; the need to consider the construction of risk perceptions in workgroups, and...
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Safety Culture and risk management in organizations
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1991Co-Authors: Nicholas Frank PidgeonAbstract:The concept of Safety Culture arose in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. It is argued that Safety Culture represents a new way of conceptualizing processes of risk handling and management in organizational and other contexts. Safety Culture provides a global characterization of some of the common behavioral preconditions to disasters and accidents in high-risk sociotechnical systems, and might also prove to be a heuristic tool to aid risk management strategies to complement current risk assessment practice. Culture is conceptualized in the current article as primarily an ideational system of meanings, and Safety Culture as one concerned with the norms, beliefs, roles, and practices for handling hazards and risk. Possible elements of a "good" Safety Culture are elaborated under three headings: norms and rules for dealing with risk, Safety attitudes, and reflexivity on Safety practice.
Tom W. Reader - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Safety Culture and power: Interactions between perceptions of Safety Culture, organisational hierarchy, and national Culture
Safety Science, 2018Co-Authors: Morgan J. Tear, Tom W. Reader, Steven T. Shorrock, Barry KirwanAbstract:Practices that involve power dynamics are integral to maintaining organisational Safety (e.g. speaking-up, challenging poor behaviour, admitting error, communicating on Safety), and staff engagement in these is assumed to be shaped by perceptions of Safety Culture. These perceptions, in-turn, are associated with (1) positions within an organisational hierarchy (which makes power-related acts more or less threatening), and (2) societal values for power distance (e.g. challenging authority). With a sample of 13,573 of air traffic control staff (controllers, engineers, administrative, and management) from 21 national air traffic providers, we reconfirm the observation that managers perceive Safety Culture more positively than frontline staff (hypothesis 1), and that workers in countries with established values for hierarchy and power report Safety Culture as less positive than those from countries with low power distance (hypothesis 2). We then, for the first time, examine the interaction between these two factors, and establish that differences in Safety Culture perceptions between those higher in the hierarchy (management) and those lower in the hierarchy (air traffic controllers and administrative staff) are exacerbated by national contexts for large power distance (hypothesis 3). The study contributes to the literature by theorising the role of power in Safety Culture theory, and its influence upon Safety Culture perceptions. Moving forward, Safety Culture research and interventions may benefit from considering how power exists and manifests at the level of superior-subordinate dynamics.
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The Safety Culture stack – the next evolution of Safety Culture?
Safety and Reliability, 2018Co-Authors: Barry Kirwan, Tom W. Reader, Anam ParandAbstract:AbstractSince its inception following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, Safety Culture has impacted a number of industries, including nuclear power, the oil and gas industry, rail...
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The relationship between national Culture and Safety Culture: Implications for international Safety Culture assessments.
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 2015Co-Authors: Mark C. Noort, Tom W. Reader, Steven Shorrock, Barry KirwanAbstract:In this article, we examine the relationship between Safety Culture and national Culture, and the implications of this relationship for international Safety Culture assessments. Focussing on Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance (UA) index, a survey study of 13,616 Air Traffic Management employees in 21 European countries found a negative association between Safety Culture and national norm data for UA. This is theorized to reflect the influence of national tendencies for UA upon attitudes and practices for managing Safety (e.g., anxiety on risk; reliance on protocols; concerns over reporting incidents; openness to different perspectives). The relationship between UA and Safety Culture is likely to have implications for international Safety Culture assessments. Specifically, benchmarking exercises will consistently indicate Safety management within organizations in high UA countries to be poorer than low UA countries due to the influence of national Culture upon Safety practices, which may limit opportunities for identifying and sharing best practice. We propose the use of Safety Culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores to statistically adjust for the influence of UA upon Safety Culture data, and to support the identification of Safety practices effective and particular to low or high UA Cultures. Practitioner points National cultural tendencies for uncertainty avoidance (UA) are negatively associated with Safety Culture. This indicates that employee Safety-related attitudes and practices may be influenced by national Culture, and thus factors outside the direct control of organizational management. International Safety Culture assessments should attempt to determine the influence of national Culture upon Safety Culture in order that benchmarking exercises compare aspects of Safety management and not national Culture. Safety Culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores provide a potential way to do this, and can facilitate the identification of best practice within countries operating in a low or high UA cultural cluster.
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Safety sans Frontières: an international Safety Culture model
Risk Analysis, 2015Co-Authors: Tom W. Reader, Mark C. Noort, Steven Shorrock, Barry KirwanAbstract:The management of Safety Culture in international and culturally diverse organizations is a concern for many high-risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of Safety Culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of Safety Culture to global environments. We examined (i) whether Safety Culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and (ii) if there is an association between Safety Culture and national Culture. The psychometric properties of a Safety Culture model developed for the air traffic management (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when Safety Culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, Safety Culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country-level data on Hofstede's five national Culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation). MANOVAs indicated Safety Culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organizational Safety Culture, with significant implications for Safety Culture theory and practice.
Pieternel A. Luning - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Determinants for conducting food Safety Culture research
Trends in Food Science & Technology, 2016Co-Authors: Shingai P. Nyarugwe, Anita Linnemann, Gert Jan Hofstede, Vincenzo Fogliano, Pieternel A. LuningAbstract:AbstractBackground Foodborne outbreaks continue to occur regardless of existing food Safety measures indicating the shortcomings of these measures to assure food Safety. This has led to the recognition of food Safety Culture as a key contributory factor to the food Safety performance of food establishments. Scope and approach The aim of this paper is to identify determinants for conducting food Safety Culture research, using the systems approach as the underlying philosophy to guide the structured reconsideration of national, organisational and Safety Culture literature, in view of food Safety. Key findings and conclusions Food Safety Culture is complex and many interlinking factors are at play. The analysis of ‘Culture’ literature showed that food Safety Culture research should acknowledge the impact of national Culture, specify hierarchical level(s) (strategic, tactical, and operational), establish underlying mechanisms, and consider the company's food risks and context characteristics. Major elements to be considered in food Safety Culture research include organisational and administrative characteristics (i.e. food Safety vision, communication, commitment, leadership, training), technical facilities/resources (i.e. food hygiene/Safety tools, equipment, & facilities), employee characteristics (i.e. attitudes, knowledge, perceptions and risk awareness), group characteristics, crucial FSMS characteristics, and actual food Safety performance. Methodological requirements for food Safety Culture research include use of the systems approach, measurable indicators, classification systems for differentiated assessment, and use of multiple methods to enhance research validity. The identified food Safety Culture research determinants provide an underpinned and transparent starting point to the common understanding and research of food Safety Culture.
Koen Ponnet - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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An integrative conceptual framework for Safety Culture : The Egg Aggregated Model (TEAM) of Safety Culture
Safety Science, 2018Co-Authors: Geert Vierendeels, Karolien Van Nunen, Genserik Reniers, Koen PonnetAbstract:Abstract In this paper, Safety-related terms, factors and dimensions, such as Safety climate, Safety attitude, Safety behaviour, Safety technology, Safety procedures, Safety training, Safety perception and others, are investigated from the perspective of Safety Culture. Based on an extensive review of literature regarding existing studies and models with respect to Safety, an overall conceptual ‘big picture’ model of Safety Culture is developed and suggested. This model, called The Egg Aggregated Model, and abbreviated TEAM, provides a clear overview of how Safety Culture can be viewed in an organisation and how the different Safety factors and dimensions constituting the Safety Culture are related in a cyclic way.
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Bibliometric analysis of Safety Culture research
Safety Science, 2017Co-Authors: Karolien Van Nunen, Jie Li, Genserik Reniers, Koen PonnetAbstract:Abstract The concept of Safety Culture is characterised by complexity. On the one hand, the concept is challenging content-wise, and on the other hand, is it a multi-dimensional and cross-disciplinary research domain. In this paper, bibliometric analysis has been applied to the field of Safety Culture to identify fundamental influences and to obtain a structured overview of the characteristics and the developments in this research domain. In total, 1789 publications published between 1900 and 2015 related to Safety Culture were identified in Web of Science. The 1789 publications cover 4591 authors, 775 journals, 76 countries or territories, and 1866 institutions. Two main research areas can be distinguished in the domain of Safety Culture: (1) organisational Safety Culture and (2) health-care and patient Safety Culture. The latter research area stands in a dominant position in Safety Culture research nowadays. Key publications are from Guldenmund (2000) and Sexton et al. (2006). Furthermore, ‘Safety Science’ is the key journal publishing on Safety Culture research, and the USA, England and China are the countries that dominate the publication production. It can be concluded that there is much collaborative research in the Safety Culture domain as multi-authored publications make up about three quarters of all publications. Also, Safety Culture research is characterised by a wide variety of research themes and multidisciplinarity. Geographical inequality in the publication output is identified as a point of concern. A movement away from technical aspects towards more human aspects could be detected as a noteworthy change in research focus.
