Safety culture

While the influence of technical factors on accidents and disruptions of the work-flow is constantly diminishing, organisational factors become the focus of attention. The basic pattern of values, norms and behaviours underlying the structure and processes as well as decisions is called the culture of an organisation, of which safety climate and safety culture is a subset. Thus, safety culture is determined to a large degree by managerial actions and in turn determines, what behaviour employees show. This text defines the constructs, discusses the role culture and management play in a prevention system and gives examples of how safety culture can both be measured and influenced.