ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the influence of societal culture upon safety culture in the construction industry. It presents several models of construction accident aetiology to demonstrate that root causes of such accidents are embedded within the construction process and the societies within which construction activity takes place. We seek to demonstrate that the safety culture paradigm constitutes a holistic way of thinking about health and safety risk management to reveal underlying factors affecting safety performance in complex systems. It refers to research conducted by the first author in the Caribbean and the United Kingdom (UK) construction industry between 1992 and 1995. This work suggests that the comparatively highly developed societal systems of legislation, inspection and consultation in the UK have not resulted in lower rates of death and ill-health in its construction industry compared with the Caribbean (Peckitt, 2001; Peckitt, Glendon and Booth, 2002). It highlights the role of societal culture in influencing the health and safety culture of the construction industry.
