Mark Noort argues that to advance the understanding and relevance of ‘safety culture’ the field needs to integrate four perspectives on the nature of culture

Noort, Mark C.

LSE Research Online

25/03/2015Putting the culture back into safety cultureblogs.lse.ac.uk /psychologylse/2015/03/25/putting-the-culture-back-into-safety-culture/Mark Noort argues that to advance the understanding and relevance of ‘safety culture’ the field needs tointegrate four perspectives on the nature of culture.Safety culture is a concept used for monitoring and learning about safety performance inorganisations that deal with operational risk. The concept has been around since the1980s following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and has been proven useful forimproving levels of safety across various countries and high-risk industries (Clarke,2006). Yet, despite of this, the safety culture literature suffers from a relative lack incultural theorising and application of cultural methods (Noort, et al., under review).Hence, here I argue that safety culture should view culture as i) resulting from biologicaladaptations to risk, ii) a sharing of beliefs on safety, iii) a variable of inter-groupdifference and iv) finally an organisational characteristic predicting organisationaloutcomes.‘Culture’ has been studied across disciplines such as social psychology, sociology and anthropology and a vastnumber of definitions and typologies have been proposed (Allaire & Firsirotu, 1984). For example, a typical definitionis ‘the way do things around here’. Arguably, this variety is partly due to the wide-ranging aims and goals of thesedisciplines, and a unified definition remains absent. However, this variety benefits the understanding of culturebecause it offers a wider perspective on the way that culture may impact on organisational outcomes such as safetyor wellbeing. At least four approaches may further the understanding of culture in safety culture, each of which isessential for getting a full understanding of the workings of culture. These four domains of culture are the following:1. BiologicalThe first approach to culture argues that culture is a product of adaptations to the brain evolved for learning. Cultureis understood as fundamentally social, but nevertheless rooted in the biological functions that enable learning andsociability (Boyd & Richerson, 1985). As Henrich (2011) put it, “culture, cultural transmission, and cultural evolutionarise from genetically evolved psychological adaptations foracquiring ideas, beliefs, values, practices, mental models, andstrategies from other individuals by observation and inference.”This process develops functions for understanding otherhumans (e.g., shared intentionality) and because adaptationsincrease in complexity over time (Tennie et al, 2009) complexcultural phenomena may emerge such as morality, religion(Boyer, 2000), and, arguably, safety culture. Such mentalfunctions for culture may have developed genetically inresponse to concrete risks faced in the evolutionary past (cf.,Barkow et al, 1992), providing early humans with the mentaladaptations for information processing and learning. Thisbenefitted the human species by increasing the likelihood ofsurvival and the manipulation of the environment through tools.For example, to survive humans needed to be able to recognizehazardous patterns in the wild (e.g. a lion in grass), which today may function to detect and prevent near misses inorganisations that deal with safety (e.g. air traffic management).2. Social-constructivist1/3The second approach to culture understands culture as a process for social learning through creating meaning andsharing understanding. This is the subject of social-constructivist accounts to culture. This approach holds thatpeople understand objects in the world differently due to different pressures (e.g., Antonsen, 2009), but cannevertheless come to a shared understanding. The process via which they do this is intersubjectivity (Gillespie &Cornish, 2010), which is based on language and actions. A seminal book in this approach is Berger and Luckmann’s(1967) Social construction of Reality. The authors argue that: 1) meaning and knowledge is created socially, 2)meaning and knowledge frames action, and that 3) action reshapes meaning, in a feedback loop. For example, bydiscussing beliefs in work team (e.g., on safety protocols), organisational practices are changed (‘objectified’), whichin turn leads to a wider adoption of the ideas underpinning the safety protocol. Sharing understanding on safetyissues has thus two functions (Gillespie, 2008): to provide a shared frame of reference for communicating, and toenable group coordination and a shared identity around safety.3. Cross-culturalThe third approach takes the beliefs and practices within a group and compares these to another group in order todraw conclusions about the nature of culture. Cross-cultural models have been developed that describe how groups(e.g. nations, organisations) have different beliefs, norms and/or affordances on how to relate to other people. Forexample, Markus and Kitayama (1991) showed that people in some countries regard themselves as moreindependent from friends and family than people in other countries. Similarly, cross-cultural differences have beendocumented in cognitive processing styles (Nisbett et al., 2001) and national cultural values (Hofstede, 2010). Suchdifferences have been argued to stem from migration patterns, national education curricula and the long-termphilosophical traditions of a nation. Cross-cultural differences are important for safety culture. We have indicatedthat a reasonable proportion of variation in safety culture isexplained by cross-cultural differences on Hofstede’sdimensions of culture (Reader, et al., 2015). For example, whenpeople in a country feel uncomfortable with ambiguity theyreported a more unfavourable collaboration on safety issues.Cross-cultural research may thus explain safety culture byvalues that shape organisational practice on safety.4. PragmaticThe final approach to culture emphasizes that groups collaborate to accomplish tasks. It thus focusses on howgroups set up organisational structures and systems that create organizational outcomes. It is within this approachthat you most often find culture referred to as an organisational facet, for example ‘achievement culture’, ‘powerculture’, ‘conformity culture’, or indeed ‘safety culture’. Schein (1990) argued that culture can be split into three levelwith varying visibility. First, and most visible, artefacts are the tangible organisational structures and processes thatshape and constrain action on a day-to-day base. These are based on espoused values, which constituteorganizational strategies, goals and philosophies. Finally, he described basic underlying assumptions, which areunconscious, taken for granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings upon which values are build. Becauseassumptions are somewhat invisible, individuals and the organisation may need external consultants to uncoverthese. Of the levels of culture, artefacts are most frequently investigated because they are most easily associatedwith organisational outcomes. This research focusses on organisational systems and structures that enable groupsto behave safely using a range of tools, such as equipment (e.g., IT, buildings) and staffing (e.g., HR practices).Safety culture research is rare to acknowledge cultural theories, and an imbalance seems to exist towards thepragmatic take on culture. However, for improving safety it is vital that we fully comprehend the cultural mechanismsthat drive safety performance. Taking these four approaches I would thus argue that academics and practitioners2/3alike take into account that safety culture is:1. Grounded in biological human functions for learning and sense-making.2. Based on meanings that are created socially and shape action.3. Variable across countries and groups.4. Shaping outcomes for organizations as assumptions, values and artefacts. Mark Noort, Msc is a principal analyst at the Department of Social Psychology at theLondon School of Economics. His research and consultancy work investigates human factors and safety culture inthe European Air Traffic Management industry. He holds an MSc in Social & Cultural Psychology from LSE, and aBSc (with distinction) in Psychology from Utrecht University where he was one of two (out of 600) to receive adistinction in combination with a degree from the highly selective Von Humboldt College honours programme. Thisblog is his last contribution before moving on from LSE.Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics3/3

Putting the culture back into safety culture

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