Safety culture : conceptual considerations and research method

This paper explores the concept of safety culture and the research method appropriate to empirically analyse safety culture. Safety culture might be commonly defined as concrete practice (‘the way we do things around here’, from Schein), but when looking for ways of improving practice, there is a tendency to emphasise what employees think and value, which then suggests that individuals must be at fault when things go wrong. Safety culture is about ‘collective mindfulness’ (Weick and Sutcliffe 2007), but our common sense tells us that thoughts and values are properties of individuals. The paper takes the findings and analysis of Hopkins (2005, 2008) around safety culture as a departure point to go further into some of the conceptual conundrums of the terms ‘safety culture’ and ‘mindfulness’. As Antonsen (2009) argues, safety culture is both a medium and outcome of social practice, and interactivity should be emphasised as the unit of analysis. Critical realist method’s utility for safety culture research will be explained.