The aim of this book is to show how a cultural approach can contribute to the assessment, description and improvement of safety conditions in organizations. The relationship between organizational culture and safety, epitomized through the concept of 'safety culture', has undoubtedly become one of the hottest topics of both safety research and practical efforts to improve safety. By combining a general framework and five research projects, the author explores and further develops the theoretical, methodological and practical basis of the study of safety culture.

What are the theoretical foundations of a cultural approach to safety? How can the relationship between organizational culture and safety be empirically investigated? What are the links between organizational culture and safety in actual organizations? How can a cultural approach contribute to the improvement of safety? These are the key questions the book seeks to answer with a unified and in-depth account of the concept of safety culture.

Contents: Foreword; Introduction; Culture and safety; Different perspectives on organizational culture; Safety culture and power; Assessing safety culture; An empirical case study – safety culture on offshore supply vessels; Improving safety through a cultural approach – limitations, constraints and possibilities; Conclusions; References; Indexes.

About the Author: Stian Antonsen holds a PhD degree in Sociology and has worked as a researcher at Studio Apertura at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology since 2003, exploring the relationship between organizational culture and safety. Previously he has worked on several research projects studying compliance to procedures, the effects of organizational changes and incident reporting systems, as well as long-term development programs for safety improvements. Additionally he has studied the consequences of public sector restructuring for societal safety. Stian's previous publications include articles in well-known journals such as Safety Science.

Reviews: 'The book brings a critical, interdisciplinary perspective to the field of safety culture research, and provides a much-needed coupling between safety research and organization science. It is of great value for both researchers and practitioners. In my opinion, it is the first book to give an overall and balanced account of safety culture research.'
Jan Hovden, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

'Stian Antonsen has provided us with a well-written and balanced text, discussing safety culture from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective, drawing both on existing literature and on his own research. He succeeds in bringing more clarity into an, until now, somewhat confusing, although important, conceptual field.'
Per Morten Schiefloe, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

This title is also available as an eBook, ISBN 978-0-7546-9394-9

Extracts from this title are available to view:

Full contents list

Introduction

Index