ABSTRACT
The massive improvement in fatality rate in Formula one following the Ayrton Senna fatality was achieved by enhancing safety design features – not by getting the drivers to slow down and take fewer risks. The observation from the world of safety culture that informs the response is the truism that, very often and in many important ways, compliance itself is discretionary. Perhaps the most influential theory that has its basis in culture and safety is that of the just culture. When suboptimal actions are analysed objectively, it can often be seen that many are entirely ‘unintentional errors’, often because the person doesn’t realise the risks they’re running. Bullying tends to go hand in hand with a blame culture, and vice versa. When formally assessing company culture it’s of course important to compare management scores with workforce scores.
