Safety sans frontières: an international safety culture model

Reader, Tom W., Noort, Mark C., Shorrock, Steven and Kirwan, Barry (2015) Safety sans frontières: an international safety culture model. Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 35 (5). pp. 770-789. ISSN 1539-6924

PDF - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 13 February 2017. Download (551Kb)

• LSE expert's profile

• Published item via DOI

Abstract

The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organisations is a concern for many high-risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of safety culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of safety culture to global environments. We examined i) whether safety culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and ii) if there is an association between safety culture and national culture. The psychometric properties of a safety culture model developed for the air traffic management industry (ATM) were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5176) and management staff (n = 1230). Through employing multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when safety culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, safety culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country-level data on Hofstede’s five national culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance). MANOVAs indicated safety culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organisational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28...
Additional Information:	© 2015 Society for Risk Analysis
Library of Congress subject classification:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Sets:	Departments > Social Psychology Departments > Psychological and Behavioural Science
Funders:	EUROCONTROL (A European Commission Agency)
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2014 11:18
URL:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60065/

Actions (login required)

Record administration - authorised staff only