Revisiting Safety Culture: The Benefits of a New Cultural Analysis Framework for Safety Management

Abstract

Many initiatives intended to improve safety in nuclear facilities have used the concept of "safety culture," which focuses on human and organizational factors and emphasizes the importance of the perceptions, interpretations, and behaviors of the individuals and groups within organizations.Particularly when it comes to risk management, it is widely believed that safety culture can be a used as a lever to strengthen a company's overall structure and organization. But how is it possible to ensure that a new safety policy or organizational infrastructure really will promote safe and reliable operations without unforeseen and undesired cultural consequences? Once recommendations have been issued, how is it possible to assess the extent to which safety culture has (or has not) improved?This paper argues that using what we call a "cultural analysis framework" can be a powerful way to identify and understand cultural elements that have an impact on reliability and safety within organizations. We will use a case study of the introduction of a safety management system in a nuclear facility to present this original approach. Because safety culture is a highly complex topic that can be challenging to address directly, our cultural analysis framework approaches a system at three levels, which, when explored together, can help to develop a comprehensive understanding of the cultural aspects of safety in an organization. First, at the macro level this approach examines the cultural background of a system and how it is integrated into an existing organizational culture. Second, at the meso level it looks at the collective aspects of a given system within an organization. Third, at the micro level it investigates collective and social life (modes of socialization, relationships, trust, practice sharing), as well as the symbolic and identity-related aspects of a system.Based on the findings of our study, this paper concludes that a socio-comprehensive approach to safety can be an effective means to identify "reasonable" actions to be taken in any organization seeking to improve risk management.

Analysis on the Application of Green Ecological Discharge Project Management in SK Hydropower Plant

“…(1) Prior to commencing excavation work, all floating rocks and debris within a radius of at least 5 meters outside the design borderline should be cleared away. If necessary, a water collection trench and safety protective fence should be installed [9].…”

The Nuclear, Humanities, and Social Science Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities for Speaking Across the Disciplinary Divides

“…Each major nuclear accident has made nuclear safety regulators attentive to the nonquantifiable aspects of safety. In their papers, Wellock 24 and Gisquet et al 25 describe the pursuit of these new forms of knowledge concerning nuclear safety by two nuclear safety regulatory organizations in the United States and France, respectively. These papers are especially interesting because their authors are embedded researchers in the very organizations and institutional frameworks they seek to study.…”

“…Juraku and Sugawara 30 and Kanamori 31 show us how the nuclear sector should learn from accidents to build more robust and vigilant organizations and institutions that do not fall into the trap of structural ignorance or the evasion of ethical and moral responsibility. Wellock 24 as well as Gisquet et al 25 show how nuclear safety regulatory organizations, by inviting in the perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, build new conceptual lenses for the oversight and improvement of nuclear safety. Kaiserfeld and Kaijser 33 also show us the value of introducing new disciplinary perspectives for the resolution of some of the nuclear sector's most pressing challenges.…”