Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological and social qualities of CT belief is important. CTs have often been understood to be “monological,” displaying the tendency for belief in one conspiracy theory to be correlated with belief in (many) others. Explanations of monologicality invoke a nomothetical or “closed” mindset whereby mutually supporting beliefs based on mistrust of official explanations are used to interpret public events as conspiracies, independent of the facts about those events (which they may ignore or deny). But research on monologicality offers little discussion of the content of monological beliefs and reasoning from the standpoint of the CT believers. This is due in part to the “access problem”: CT believers are averse to being researched because they often distrust researchers and what they appear to represent. Using several strategies to address the access problem we were able to engage CT believers in semi-structured interviews, combining their results with analysis of media documents and field observations to reconstruct a conspiracy worldview – a set of symbolic resources drawn on by CT believers about important dimensions of ontology, epistemology, and human agency. The worldview is structured around six main dimensions: the nature of reality, the self, the outgroup, the ingroup, relevant social and political action, and possible future change. We also describe an ascending typology of five types of CT believers, which vary according to their positions on each of these dimensions. Our findings converge with prior explorations of CT beliefs but also revealed novel aspects: A sense of community among CT believers, a highly differentiated representation of the outgroup, a personal journey of conversion, variegated kinds of political action, and optimistic belief in future change. These findings are at odds with the typical image of monological CT believers as paranoid, cynical, anomic and irrational. For many, the CT worldview may rather constitute the ideological underpinning of a nascent pre-figurative social movement.
The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organizations 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 (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup 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 long-term orientation). 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 organizational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice.
In this article, we examine the relationship between safety culture and national culture, and the implications of this relationship for international safety culture assessments. Focussing on Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance (UA) index, a survey study of 13,616 Air Traffic Management employees in 21 European countries found a negative association between safety culture and national norm data for UA. This is theorized to reflect the influence of national tendencies for UA upon attitudes and practices for managing safety (e.g., anxiety on risk; reliance on protocols; concerns over reporting incidents; openness to different perspectives). The relationship between UA and safety culture is likely to have implications for international safety culture assessments. Specifically, benchmarking exercises will consistently indicate safety management within organizations in high UA countries to be poorer than low UA countries due to the influence of national culture upon safety practices, which may limit opportunities for identifying and sharing best practice. We propose the use of safety culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores to statistically adjust for the influence of UA upon safety culture data, and to support the identification of safety practices effective and particular to low or high UA cultures.Practitioner points National cultural tendencies for uncertainty avoidance (UA) are negatively associated with safety culture.This indicates that employee safety‐related attitudes and practices may be influenced by national culture, and thus factors outside the direct control of organizational management.International safety culture assessments should attempt to determine the influence of national culture upon safety culture in order that benchmarking exercises compare aspects of safety management and not national culture.Safety culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores provide a potential way to do this, and can facilitate the identification of best practice within countries operating in a low or high UA cultural cluster.
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