Some safety culture definitions (1991a-2006a)

The Chernobyl accident in April 1986 provided evidence oftechnological vulnerability, and emphasized the need to better understandorganizational safety. The term safety culture was first introduced in INSAG’s Summary Report on the Post-Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident,published by the IAEA as Safety Series No. 75-INSAG-1 in 1986, and was furtherexpanded on in Basic Safety Principles for Nuclear Power Plants, Safety SeriesNo. 75-INSAG-3, issued in 1988 (IAEA,1991).

The concept of safety culture is often presented separately from anorganization’s other characteristics, such as the work schedule, technology,business strategy and financial decision-making (Reiman and Oedewald, 2004).Reimanand Oedewald (2004) reveal that this conceptual separation of safetyculture reduces the term to refer only to factors that are clearly connectedwith safety, such as safety attitudes and safety values. Although it has beenwidely used for many years, the concept of safety culture is not preciselyclear. In order to better understand safety culture, a number of past studies onsafety culture definition should be examined. Numerous definitions of safetyculture exist in the academic literature, and examples of selected deefinitionsare listed as follows.

(1) The International AtomicEnergy Agency (IAEA, 1991): safety culture as ‘that assembly ofcharacteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals, whichestablishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issuesreceive the attention warranted by their significance’. This deWnitionhighlights two major points: (1) while safety culture is about good safetyattitudes, it is also about good safety management established byorganizations; (2) good safety culture means assigning the highest priority tosafety.

(2) Kennedy and Kirwan (1998):An abstract concept, which is underpinned by the amalgamation of individual andgroup perceptions, thought processes, feelings and behaviors, which in turn givesrise to the particular way of doing things in the organization. It is asub-element of the overall organizational culture.

(3) Hale (2000): Refersto ‘the attitudes, beliefs and perceptions shared by natural groups as deWningnorms and values, which determine how they act and react in relation to risksand risk control systems’.

(4) Glendon and Stanton(2000): Comprises attitudes, behaviors, norms and values, personalresponsibilities as well as human resources features such as training anddevelopment.

(5) Guldenmund (2000): Thoseaspects of the organizational culture which will impact on attitudes andbehavior related to increasing or decreasing risk.

(6) Cooper (2000): Cultureis ‘the product of multiple goal-directed interactions between people(psychological), jobs (behavioral) and the organization (situational); whilesafety culture is ‘that observable degree of eVort by which all organizationalmembers directs their attention and actions toward improving safety on a dailybasis’.

(7) Mohamed (2003): A sub-facet of organizational culture, which affects workers’ attitudes and behavior inrelation to an organization’s on-going safety performance.

(8) Richter and Koch (2004):Shared and learned meanings, experiences and interpretations of work and safety-expressedpartially symbolically–which guide people’s actions towards risk, accidents andprevention.

(9) Fang et al. (2006): Aset of prevailing indicators, beliefs and values that the organization owns insafety.