ABSTRACT
Increasingly the notion of safety culture is invoked to explain failures at an organisational level leading to major disasters. Thus, for example, a recent issue of the journal Safety Science was entirely devoted to this topic. Human Factors practitioners are aware that implementation of their prescriptions can require a culture shift in the organisations for which they work. What does this notion of 'Culture' explain? Sometimes it seems as if 'Culture' is simply a kind of bucket in which phenomena for which there is no adequate explanation are dumped. It is enough to use the label and we avoid explaining anything. When one begins to explore more thoroughly the territory of theories of culture it becomes apparent that one of their chief functions is to explain stability - how do societies, communities, or organisations maintain shared systems of meaning or norms of activity? Such theories are, almost by defmition, not very good at explaining change. If they are not very good at explaining change, then they are probably not very good at supporting effective prescriptions for how change might be planned or managed. This then leads to a further problem - there is a temptation for analyses of culture to become prescriptive rather than descriptive. Thus Pidgeon and O'Leary's (1994) analysis seeks to expound the characteristics of a 'good safety culture'. Whilst this analysis is very compelling, it is difficult to use it as a practical guide to management action other than as an exhortatory statement - this is what you should do.
