Safety culture: Snapshot of a developing concept

Journal of Occupational Health and Safety - Australia and New Zealand

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 179-189

  Glendon, Ian ^a  

^a GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 50549088630     PISSN: 08156409     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Editorial

References (26)

1. Cox, S and Flin, P, Editorial: safety culture. Work & Stress 1998, 12(3): 187-188.
2. Hale, A. Editorial: culture's confusions. Safety Science 2000, 34(1-3): 1-14.
3. Baram, M and Schoebel, M. Editorial: safety culture and behavioral change at the workplace. Safety Science 2007, 45(6): 631-636.
4. Swuste, P. Editorial: WOS2006, regulatory issues, safety climate, culture, and management. Safety Science 2008, 46(3): 345-348.
5. Glendon, I. Safety culture: snapshot of a developing concept. J Occup Health Safety - Aust NZ 2008, 24(3): 179-189.
6. Zohar, D. Safety climate in industrial organisations: theoretical and applied implications. J Appl Psychol 1980, 65(1): 96-102.
7. Brown, R and Holmes, H. The use of factor-analytic procedure for assessing the validity of an employee safety climate model. Accid Anal Prev 1986, 18(6): 455-470.
8. All citation indices were determined through Google Scholar on 31 January 2008. While other sources of citation counts are available (for example, Web of Science), Google Scholar was selected as being particularly comprehensive and likely to provide the greatest variability in citation data fbr analysis. For more information on citations and related performance indicators, see www.heeact.edu.tw/ ranking/EngIndicator.htm.
9. Zohar, D. Safety climate in industrial organisations: theoretical and applied implications. J Appl Psychol 1980, 65(1): 96-102 (290 citations).
10. Zohar, D. A group-level model of safety climate: testing the effect of group climate on microaccidents in manufacturing jobs. J Appl Psychol 2000, 85(4): 587-596 (156 citations).
11. Guldenmund, F. The nature of safety culture: a review of theory and research. Safety Science 2000, 34(1-3): 215-257 (147 citations).
12. Flin, R, Mearns, K, O'Connor, P and Bryden, R. Measuring safety climate: identifying the common features. Safety Science 2000, 34(1-3): 177-192 (130 citations).
13. Dedobbeleer, N and Béland, F. A safety climate measure for construction sites. J Safety Res 1991, 22(2): 97-103 (114 citations).
14. Spearman's rho (ρ) is used in this and other instances in this article because of non-normal distributions.
15. Strictly speaking, the highly skewed distribution would preclude parametric analysis in this and the other instances in this article. However, as ANCOVA is relatively robust to breaches of normality, the analysis was undertaken as indicative rather than definitive.
16. This arbitrary scoring system was selected on the grounds that, typically, an article's first-named author contributes the greatest amount, for example, writing the first draft. Less than 12% of all articles were authored by researchers from more than one country, and this points allocation was consistently applied to the 24 articles in this sub-sample.
17. For more information on the top 20 countries by all scientific articles and citations, see www.in-cites.com/countries/2002allfields.html.
18. Indices might include number of universities, percentage of population with degrees, or levels of active research. Other options could include some measure of national-level occupational injury data. However, these are known to be subject to differences in reporting, recording arid analysis - even definitions of occupational fatalities differ - see, for example, Glendon, A and Clarke, R, How occupational accidents and diseases are reported in the European community, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications, 1988 (also available in Spanish, Danish, German, Greek, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese).
19. The exceptions were France, for which the 1 January 2008 figure was the one available, and Israel, for which the CIA World Factbook estimate for 2007 was the one available. Given the error variance in all of these estimates, it is highly unlikely that the different sources for these two estimates would have made any difference to the calculations.
20. It is interesting to compare the analysis of scientific articles in this particular OHS field with a comment on the production of occupational health scientific articles, which cited evidence to indicate that, while the US, the UK, and Scandinavian countries had the highest production rates, when adjusted for population size, Scandinavian countries led the field. See Smith, D, The occupational health and safety editorial, J Occup Health Safety - Aust NZ 2008, 24(1): 3-6.
21. This analysis is at variance with a recent statement made by an Australian OHS researcher (in response to a questionnaire compiled by the professional journal National Safety) who stated that, "In more general areas of OHS such as safety climate, accident causation and human error, the leading research is being done in the UK and Holland. Australia is not even on the radar on these issues" (OHS researchers speak out, National Safety 2007, 78(10): 46-48). The analyses described in the current article suggest that, while it is correct to state that the UK and the Netherlands are among the high performers in this field, greater scrutiny of relevant publications strongly indicates that, in the safety culture/climate domain at least, Australia is holding its own in a group headed by Israel and also including Ireland, Switzerland, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries.
22. Quinlan, M. Forget evidence: the demise of research involvement by NOHSC since 1996. J Occup Health Safety - Aust NZ 2000, 16(31): 213-227.
23. Capra, M. The future of OHS education: a time to bring all parties together. J Occup Health Safety - Aust NZ 2006, 22(4): 283-286.
24. Mayhew, C. Funding for OHS research in Australia. J Occup Health Safety - Aust NZ 2006, 22(6): 499-504.
25. The spread of safety culture/climate research in Australian universities indicates strong potential for local expansion of research in this field in the event that further dedicated research funding becomes available. For a broader analysis of the mechanisms by which social scientific research in Australia and elsewhere is being increasingly channelled towards serving corporatist ends, see, for example, Thornton, M, The retreat from the critical: social science research in the corporatised university, Australian Universities Review 2008, 50(1): 5-10.
26. Of greater concern might be results from a small-scale annual survey of chief executive officers of large Australian companies who responded to three "wish list" questions on recent achievements, current desires and a 2008 "to do" list (Durie, J, Corporate captains learn to price in risks, The Weekend Australian, 22-23 December 2007). Of 25 CEO responses, only two mentioned safety - one was the CEO of an oil company and the other was from a large construction company. While this might be an improvement on responses to similar surveys in previous years, a reasonable target fbr OHS researchers could be to seek to exert greater influence at this level of industry.