Benchmarking Safety Climate in Hazardous Environments: A Longitudinal, Interorganizational Approach

Abstract

Safety climate is an important element of organizational reliability. This study applied benchmarking strategies for monitoring safety climate across nine North Sea oil and gas installations that were surveyed in consecutive years. Examination of absolute changes in safety climate complemented the benchmarking approach. Discriminant function analyses (DFA) identified the elements of safety climate predictive of self-reported accidents; correlational analyses were applied to the scale scores and accident proportions across the year period. Absolute improvements were substantial, with safety climate profiles converging in the second year. Large relative improvements were also observed. DFA highlighted perceived management commitment to safety and willingness to report accidents as significant predictors of personal accident involvement. Changes in perceived management commitment to safety were closely associated with changes in safety behavior.

Safety Culture in Financial Trading: An Analysis of Trading Misconduct Investigations

“…on the priorities of management) and practices (e.g. risk-taking, protocols) within organisations that influence how risk and safety are managed (Cooper 2000;Guldenmund 2000;Mearns et al 2001;Pidgeon 1998;Reiman and Oedewald 2004). The concept of safety culture became prominent due to it being identified as a casual factor in various catastrophic accidents (e.g.…”

“…Indeed, safety culture measurement and improvement has become an integral part of Risk Management within domains such as health care, aviation, offshore oil and gas production, and nuclear power (Carroll 1998;Mearns et al 2001;Reader et al 2015;Weaver et al 2013). Yet, no comparable approach exists for financial trading, and in the context of financial organisations being required to monitor and improve Risk Management and organisational culture (IIF 2009; Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards 2013), safety culture theory appears useful for the following three reasons.…”

“…Within other high-risk industries, safety culture measurement is often used to benchmark risk-related practices within organisations in a given industry (Mearns et al 2001). These data (e.g.…”

“…This typically leads to remedial action: for example training, modification of key processes, communication from management (Mearns et al 2013). Such data also allow for benchmarking and inter-organisational learning, which is routine practice within aviation, energy and nuclear power (Carroll 1998;Mearns et al 2001;Noort et al 2015). As our current research is limited by the use of only one data source, we propose the development and testing of a survey tool with the participation of employees in different financial institutions internationally.…”

“…risk-taking, protocols) for managing safety in high-risk organisations (e.g. aviation, health care, nuclear power, military) (Cooper 2000;Guldenmund 2000;Mearns et al 2001;Pidgeon 1998;Reiman and Oedewald 2004). Although different approaches exist to theorise and measure organisational culture (Cameron and Quinn 2005;Erez and Gati 2004;Hofstede et al 1990), safety culture has become the dominant theory used to understand how cultural factors determine risk practices in industries that must balance competing demands of productivity and safety (Glendon and Stanton 2000;Nordlöf et al 2015).…”