The dissemination of the Culture of Safety as an essential tool for the improvement of working conditions and production efficiency: Discussion on the multidisciplinary approach and main sub-topics

Abstract

This paper deals with the dissemination of the Culture of Safety, a pivotal chain link towards the improvement of the Occupational Safety and Health - OS&H conditions. The Authors discuss the conditions affecting the work-related accidents and health impairments occurrence, together with the relationship between such criticalities and the dissemination of the Culture of Safety. The Culture of Safety still shows serious shortcomings at all levels, and in particular in situations –typically temporary or mobile construction sites and underground activities- characterized by high accident rates all over the world. The Culture of Safety, i.e. "the enduring value and prioritization of worker and public safety by each member of each group and in every level of an organization", gained in the last decades a wide attention in the international literature as a system of organized and systematic knowledge production, i.e. a specific science, for both its importance as a basic asset for prevention, and its typical multidisciplinary characteristics. A challenging and thorough analysis resulted in the proposal of an organic classification of the various aspects of the Culture of Safety into homogeneous sub-categories, precious as a key reading and reference for framing and analyzing in an unbiased approach the OS&H system faults in real cases