ABSTRACT
Safety culture has been a theme in human factors research and practice for more than two decades. The concept has resulted in a mass of research and practical interventions, both small and large, in many industrial sectors. Recent thinking has, however, been increasingly critical of the concept and the value of safety culture research and practice. Criticisms of safety culture include the accusations that safety culture is inherently contradictory (Walker, 2010), that the links with systems thinking are not evident (Reiman and Rollenhagen, 2014), that there is insufficient integration with macroergonomics (Murphy et al, 2014), that culture talk can also obscure uncomfortable, yet crucial social phenomena (Szymczaka, 2014). There is also a concern that safety culture, or facets of it such as ‘just culture’, may be rooted in a traditionalist safety paradigm (Safety-I) and conflict with the emerging paradigms (Safety-II, see Hollnagel, 2014). At the same time, practitioners’ experience on the ground is that the concept remains useful and relevant for various practical and political reasons, and should not be discarded. The middle ground may be that our ideas about safety culture need to adapt, both theoretically and practically, in several ways. This should be of interest to many human factors specialists, both for research and practice.
