Organisational culture characterised

Another way to think about safety culture might be to start by setting aside, at least for a short time, the very idea of a safety culture and begin instead with the idea that complex organisations are characterised by a multitude of shared meanings, norms, values and beliefs that are manifest in and recursively recreated... 

The safety culture of an organisation is the product of the individual and group values, attitudes, competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation s health and safety programmes. Organisations with a positive safety culture are characterised by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety, and by confidence in the efficacy of preventative measures. 

Organisations with a positive safety culture are characterised by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures [7],... 

Reason has analysed the effects of an inadequate safety culture on the risk of accidents from a barrier perspective (Reason, 1998). The three conditions that he focuses on are found in the list above on safety-climate elements. First, a poor safety culture will increase the frequency of human errors and rule violations and thus also increase active barrier transgressions. Second, it will result in complacency and in unwillingness to check and maintain passive barriers adequately. Third, the organisation that is characterised by an inadequate safety climate will be unwilling to report and follow up near accidents and identified deficiencies in the barriers. 

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