A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF THE ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON THE MANAGEMENT OF

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

Introduction

BP creates history. With the worlds largest accidental spill of oil in marine waters, BP will certainly
be remembered. The Deep Water Horizon rig explosion on 20th of April 2010 left 11 dead, 17 injured
and more than 5 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. (Robertson and Krauss 2010). The track
record of BP is certainly quite impressive, with a long record of legal and ethical violations,
interspersed with a major disaster in 2005 at Texas City, and several fatalities and persistent safety
violations. BP is also the world leader in terms of the maximum fines imposed for OHSA violations,
with a record fine of 87 million US dollars imposed in October 2009. (Pagnamenta, 2009) As far as
safety performance is concerned, BP, certainly is in an unenviable position.

So, what is the reason behind this sordid state of affairs? In his opening statement, Rep. Bart Stupak
(2010), Chairman, of the committee conducting the enquiry on the Deepwater disaster, cited a lack
of safety culture in BPs operations. Describing the past performance of BP, he mentioned that
several reports criticized management at the Texas City facility including BPs own 2007 Report of
the Management Accountability Project which stated a culture that evolved over the years seemed
to ignore risk, tolerated non-compliance and accepted incompetence.

In his deposition to the National Commission of Enquiry on the Deepwater tragedy, Rex W.
Tillerson (2010), Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation emphasised that the
commitment to safety is not a priority; it is a value that shapes decision making all the time and
across all levels of organizational hierarchy. Rules and procedures, though essential, cannot
ensure safety. It is a companys culture, the unwritten standards and norms that shape mind sets,
attitudes and behaviours that does. Companies must develop a culture in which the value of safety is
embedded in every level of the workforce, reinforced at every turn and upheld above all other
considerations.

Discussion of Culture and Climate

Safety Culture defines the way safety is managed at the workplace. It often reflects "the
attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety" (Cox and Cox,
1991). The U.K. Health and Safety Commission defines safety culture as: The product of individual
and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine
the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organizations health and safety
management (HSC, 1993, p. 23).

Safety culture comprises of two key elements. Firstly, attitudes and opinions of safety are shared
both at the individual and organizational levels and secondly, there is stability over time. The
concept of safety culture (climate) was initially introduced by Zohar (1980), and subsequently was
referred to in the debate on nuclear safety by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group
(1988) in their analysis of the Chernobyl disaster (see Stanton, N., ed., 1996. p. 318.) The Chernobyl
disaster highlighted the significance of safety culture in relation to safety performance. (Flin., et al,
2000). This concept, attempts to explain how the knowledge and understanding of safety and risk by
employees and the organization as a whole, influences safety performance. Furthermore,
organizations differ by the way they function, the way power and decision making authority are
shared, and, the behaviour, commitment and attitude of the workforce. The concept of safety
culture attempts to explain how these differences contribute to differences in safety performance.

Organizations differ in the way they carry out their activities, in the way they behave, perceive,
react, and respond as a group. These characteristics are long standing and denote the culture of the
organization the so called organizational culture. This difference in culture reflects the way in
which the organization as a whole conducts its business and it reflects on the performance of the
organization in various spheres of its activities, including safety. In organizations carrying out high
risk activities, there is a marked variation in the safety performance. The rules and procedures
followed by all these high risk organizations undertaking similar processes are almost identical, but
their safety performance differs by a wide margin. This difference in performance is best explained
by considering the culture of the organization the underlying attitudes and beliefs of the workforce
as a group.

Many authors use the terms culture and climate interchangeably, others, however, prefer to
distinguish between the two and view them as distinct but related concepts (Mearns and Flin, 1999).
The term culture implies a set of characteristics that define a whole group, such as Eastern
culture or European culture. On the other hand climate refers to a predominant influence or
environmental conditions (the atmosphere) characterizing a group or period such as a climate of
uncertainty or a hostile climate. Culture thus denotes an ingrained and longstanding influence
that has evolved over the lifespan of the organization. On the other hand, climate represents the
prevalent influence at a particular point in time, and it may be transitory. In the context of safety,
culture reflects the underlying beliefs, attitudes, values and practices of a community in relation to
safety and risk, whereas, climate refers to their perceptions and reactions to the way they feel safety
is being managed in the organization. Safety climate also refers to how these perceptions and
reactions may contribute to an incident. The concept of safety climate underscores the importance
of the way health and safety issues at the workplace are addressed by organizations. This is
especially relevant in situations where the organization plans to make changes in its operations and
the attempt to bring out the change will influence the workers perception of the organization.
Change in the milieu leads to an adaptation of perceptions and ultimately will lead to a
corresponding change in employee behaviour (Zohar 1980). As a result, safety related behaviours of
workers (i.e. use of PPEs, adhering to safety regulations) are influenced by their perceptions and
attitudes towards their organizations outlook towards safety. Safety culture has a huge impact on
employee behaviour, but other factors may also contribute. These factors depend on the safety
climate of the organization and may include attitude of supervisors, interpretation of safety policies
and production demands. In short, safety climate can be viewed as the manifestation of safety
culture in the behaviour and expressed attitudes of the employees.

Safety climate is typically measured using questionnaires and give an image of the present state of
safety. On the other hand, measurement of safety culture necessitates a detailed study of the way in
which organizational members interact with each other to form a shared and sustained approach to
safety. Being deep seated, safety culture cannot be expected to change readily, on the other hand
safety climate, reflecting workers perceptions about OHS management is transient and amenable to
change.

It is widely agreed that organizational culture is difficult to define. Subjectivists view organizational
culture as what an organization is (root metaphor) with respect to its culture, on the other hand,
objectivists view and describe culture as what an organization has (variable). Subjectivists feel that
culture is derived from shared values, attitudes, beliefs and ideologies that are unique for a group.
Conversely, objectivists are of the opinion that organizational culture is based upon collective
practices derived from organizational characteristics such as structure and systems. It is difficult to
change shared values, but shared practices are amenable to change through active intervention in
areas of organizational systems and structure. By adopting the objectivists view, management
experts are convinced that through directed efforts changes in the culture of an organization can be
brought about. This has implications in terms of improving the safety performance of an
organization. In contrast, the subjectivists feel that change is a passive result of cultural evolution.

Organizational culture can be analysed in three different perspectives (Martin 1992): integration,
differentiation and fragmentation. The integration perspective portrays culture as the shared
understandings in any given organization and a consistency is identified across cultural
manifestations. The differentiation perspective focuses on sub-cultures and emphasize the lack of
consensus between interpretations and meanings in an organization. Fragmentation perspective is
viewed as ambiguous, cultural manifestations are ambiguous and in terms of interpretations and
meanings, there is lack of clarity. Consensus may appear briefly over certain issues, and after
resolution of those issues, consensus disappears.

Influence on OHS Management

Investigations on organizational accidents focus on the contributing factors that may be implicated
in causing the incident or in shaping the outcome at the human, technical or organizational levels.
Analyses of several major disasters have incriminated organizational factors such as policies and
procedures, with safety culture having a definitive impact on the outcome of the disaster (Reason,
1990). Most of these major disasters resulted from a disintegration of the organizations established
policies and procedures to deal with safety.

Organizational cultures vary in their attitude to safety related issues (Westrum, 1992). Organizations
with pathological cultures are not concerned about safety and look for ways to escape penalities due
to safety violations. They are characterized by a system of denial safety issues do not exist. In
this culture, people raising concerns are penalized, responsibility is avoided and failures are
punished or concealed. Moreover, new ideas and innovations are actively discouraged.
Organizations with a predominant bureaucratic culture blindly follow all rules and procedures, and
think that nothing better exists and feel that whatever they are doing cannot be improved upon.
These organizations may not be aware of problems or safety issues. Concerns raised are just about
listened to; responsibilities are clearly defined and exclusive and failures merit local solutions. New
ideas are considered as added work and problems. In those organizations that profess a generative
culture safe behaviour is fully integrated in each of its activities. Such organizations actively seek
safety issues and encourage people to raise concerns. Responsibility in these organizations is shared
and failures lead to far reaching reforms. Moreover, new ideas are welcomed.

These attitudes can be modified and can be seen as a culture ladder by which organizations attempt
to improve their performance. Thus, an organization with a pathological culture may move on to a
bureaucratic or generative culture. There are some issues however. As bureaucratic organizations
are generally comfortable with their position, they are hard to improve, even if they are aware that
improvement is possible. Small and medium sized organizations find it easier to progress to
generative cultures, on the other hand, large organizations are usually heavily burdened with
bureaucracy and improvement is difficult.

Based upon their culture, organizations may be classified as having a strong or a weak and
dysfunctional culture (Reason, 1997). Strong cultures are characterized by the universal sharing of
the organizational goals and values across all levels of the organization. People working in these
organizations, regardless of hierarchical level are know what they have to do in most situations as
the few guiding values are well communicated and understood. Safety performance in these strong
cultures is of very high standard. Dysfunctional or negative cultures, on the other hand are
characterized by organizational symptoms such as learned helplessness and anxiety avoidance.
Learned helplessness is a condition where people learn that attempts to bring about a change
cannot succeed and hence stop trying. They are demotivated and do not attempt to solve problems.
A fatalistic attitude results. Anxiety avoidance results from attempts to reduce collective anxiety, and
is preferred regardless of actual effectiveness. Thus, anxiety avoidance leads to institution of steps
to reduce anxiety instead of solving problems. Both of these dysfunctional states drive the blame
cycle. Overwhelmed by accidents, people engage in the practice of blaming a person or a procedure
to avoid group anxiety even if it does not solve the problem or prevent a recurrence. The overall
effect on safety performance is disastrous.

Reason(1997) describes an ideal safety culture as an engine that propels the system to a goal of
maximum safety and health regardless of the personality of the leader or current commercial
considerations. This engine depends upon a safety information system that collects, analyses and
disseminates information related to safety performance and thereby creates an informed culture.
This forms the basis of an effective safety culture. The success of this information system depends
upon the active participation of the workforce in reporting safety related information, thus
establishing a reporting culture. To ensure that workers report incidents, errors and near misses
proper handling of blame and punishment has to be ensured. This would reduce fear and encourage
employees to report concerns and incidents. However, having an extremely tolerant attitude
towards safety violations would be counterproductive. In this regard, a just culture has to be
established. Here, employees may be encouraged or even rewarded for reporting incidents, but the
organization differentiates between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Empowerment of
employees to take decisions on the spot in emergencies leads to further development. This involves
the establishment of a flexible culture where the decision-making authority may be passed on to
frontline employees in emergent situations. Importantly, the organization must have a learning
culture which encourages accurate assessment of information provided by the safety information
system and the willingness to carry out major reforms.

Predominant views on organizational culture include:

1. Deal and Kennedy (1982) have summarized organizational culture in one phrase the way
things get done around here, thus describing a process culture, which is the hallmark of
bureaucracies. The main concern is how things are done and not what is achieved.
Consistent results are expected out of these cultures but being bureaucratic there is a deep
inertia which prevents the organization from improving its safety performance.
2. Schein (1991) views culture within the integration perspective and has defined
organizational culture as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that have been invented,
discovered or developed by a given group in the process of learning to cope with problems
of external adaptation and internal integration. These assumptions have been validated by
results and therefore have to be taught to the new members of the group as the appropriate
way to perceive think and feel in relation to those problems. Schein proposed three different
levels of organizational culture based on complexity and depth of understanding. The most
superficial level is that of artefacts that are commonly visible. This includes the facilities,
visible awards and recognition, the way its members interact with one another and with
outsiders, and the organizations slogans, mission statements and other operational creeds.
At an intermediate level, that of organizational values, the professed culture of the
members is evident. Local and personal values are widely expressed within the organization
at this level. This level can usually be studied by interviewing the members and by using
questionnaires to gather attitudes about organizational membership. The organizations
underlying assumptions are found at the deepest or innermost level. These are the specific
characteristic that are unseen and undefined in day-to-day interactions of organizational
members and are not discussed within the members. These norms exist without conscious
knowledge of the members. Long-standing members who are expected to have sufficient
experience of this deepest level of organizational culture become acclimatized to its
attributes and thus reinforce their invisibility. Culture at this level is the underlying and
driving element that is often missed by those trying to analyse organizational behaviour. By
looking at organizational culture from an observers point of view, Scheins model makes it
simpler to understand paradoxical organizational behaviour. For example, an organization
may display highly ethical standards of behaviour at the values level, but at the assumptions
level may show opposing behaviour. Organizational rewards may imply a particular
organizational norm at the superficial level, whereas, at the deepest level the implications
may be entirely different. This also explains the long time it takes for newcomers to be
acclimatized to the culture. Attempts to change culture may fail because the underlying tacit
norms are not understood by those attempting to bring about the change.
3. Charles Handy (1993) linked the structure of organizations to its culture. His system was
derived from the pioneering work of Harrison in this field. Four types of culture were
described, and it has been emphasised that there is no ideal culture. A particular type may
suit an organization during a particular phase of its existence, and may be disastrous in
another time frame, or totally unsuited for a different organization.
Power culture: This type is commonly seen in small organizations and is likened to a web,
wherein the controls are in the hands of a central figure and the influence radiates out like a
web. Rules are few and bureaucracy is limited, and individual relations are more important
than organizational hierarchy. Decisions are swift and are based more upon the balance of
influence than on procedures or logic. The main disadvantage is the dependence on a key
individual for all the decisions, without whom the organization would come to a standstill.
 These organizations have the greatest potential to improve their safety performance,
however, it all depends on the individual in power.
Role culture: This is characterised by a well-defined structure, and clearly specified
authorities and hierarchies. Depending on rules and systems, with power related to position,
this culture functions as a bureaucracy with consistent results in a stable environment. It is
compared to a Greek temple, the pillars representing the various functions and strength of
the organization and the pediment symbolizing the senior management. However, these
organizations are prone to interdepartmental conflicts. Safety performance in these
organizations is constrained by the possibility of internal conflicts and lack of coordination.
Task culture: A highly adaptable and effective culture which is project or job oriented. The
structure is similar to a net with much of the power lying at the interstices of the net, and so
it is also referred to as a matrix structure. Expert power determines the scope of influence
and much more important than position or personal power. Highly adaptable and effective
functioning is ensured by concentrating all the decision making powers within the functional
groups. More importantly, these groups can be readily formed, dismantled or continued, all
depending upon the current situation. This culture is very effective in situations requiring
extreme responsiveness to the external environment, but, is difficult to function in large
scale enterprises or even in situations requiring a high level of expertise. These organizations
have a flexible culture which ensures that experts handle emergency situations from the
initial period. This ensures a high safety performance.
Person culture: Centred on the individual, this is rare. The organization exists only to serve
the needs of these groups of people or individuals and a cluster may be a more appropriate
term for the organization. More commonly, individuals who prefer this culture are working
in organizations that have a different predominant culture. In these instances, the individual
regards the organization as a platform for personal career aspirations. With individual
motives overriding common interests, these organizations are liable to fare poorly in terms
of safety performance.
4. Carmazzi (2007) has classified culture in five distinct groups.
Blame culture: Motivated by fear and distrust, people in these organizations blame each
other to avoid being punished. This leads to a situation in which people avoid taking
initiative and new ideas and innovation is discouraged. This is the hallmark of dysfunctional
organizations with poor safety performance.
Multi-directional culture: Interdepartmental communication and cooperation is minimal in
this culture. Loyalties are limited to the intra group level and each department criticises and
competes with the other. Lack of coordination and cooperation leads to multi-directional
efforts which result in overall inefficiency of the entire organization.
Live and let live culture: Characterised by complacency, this culture personifies mental
stagnation and low creativity. Lacking personal aspirations and vision, members of this
culture have lost their passion. With an average level of cooperation and coordination, the
organization is able to function but improvement and growth is lacking, and safety
performance is poor.
Brand congruent culture: The workforce in these organizations believe in the product or
service of the organization and identify with the organizations objectives. They are
passionate about the organizations goals and align their aspirations with it. Using personal
 resources to actively solve organizational problems, they perceive their job to be important.
A proactive approach to safety is evident.
Leadership enriched culture: Viewing the organization as an extension of themselves,
people feel good about their personal achievements through the organization. Exceptional
cooperation exists and individual goals are aligned with those of the organization, and
people may do everything possible to achieve organizational goals. The organization
functions as a cohesive group that provides personal fulfilment to its members. Leaders do
not develop followers, but develop other leaders. These organizations belong to the
generative organizational cultures where safety performance is the best.

Conclusions

Being one of the most stable and powerful forces within an organization, culture, is the spirit of the
organization. It shapes the way members of the organization think, behave, and approach their work
and represents the unique style of functioning of the organization. Analyses of recent disasters have
implicated organizational culture as an important factor affecting the outcome. It has been
appreciated that an organizational culture that supports safety is essential for the prevention of
accidents and occupational ailments. An effective safety framework created by safety management
systems and programmes is not enough to ensure safety; ultimately the worker's perception of the
value of safety to himself and the importance of safety to the organization that governs safety
performance. Simply put, for true safety performance, both the underlying systems and an
organizational culture that supports them are needed. The aspect of culture that affects safety
performance is referred to as safety culture.

Hill and Jones (2001) have defined organizational culture as certain values and norms that are
specific to an organization and are shared by people and groups within it, and determine the manner
in which the members and sections of the organization interact with each other and with the
external environment. Organizational values in turn have been described as the unspoken directives
regarding the types of goals members of the organization should pursue and the appropriate
standards of behaviour that are expected to achieve those goals. Organizational norms are unspoken
guidelines that prescribe appropriate behaviour by individuals in specific situations and regulate the
way organizational members behave with one another.

Safety culture and climate are two different concepts. Safety culture describes the underlying
attitudes, values and practices related to safety. On the other hand safety climate is seen as the
overt manifestation of safety culture in the behaviour and expressed attitudes of the workers and
reflects the perceptions and consequent reactions of the employees to the way safety is managed by
the organization. Safety culture can be viewed as a static phenomenon that requires active
intervention to change, whereas, climate is a dynamic condition that varies according to the
prevalent influences.

Management professionals and anthropologists agree that culture is a shared intangible trait that
affects human behaviour. However, anthropologists hold the view that culture evolves naturally
over time and cannot be influenced. On the other hand, management professionals believe that
culture is created, sustained and influenced through human interaction. Based upon this
assumption, management professionals have proposed that the safety culture of an organization is
amenable to focussed intervention and an enriched safety culture can be developed.

Presently, interventions to modify safety culture are directed towards creating an open and
transparent organization that is impartial, encourages disclosure and reporting, is flexible in its
functioning and learns from its mistakes. Such interventions are relatively easy to apply in small and
medium sized organizations in comparison to large organizations that may get bogged down due to
rigid and inflexible structure.

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