ABSTRACT
The term safety culture tends to elicit very strong opinions – everything from full acceptance of its existence and its validity, through to outright rejection and in some cases, contempt. Many of these debates might be characterized as shedding ‘more heat than ‘light’, however, they also reflect the tensions amongst both academics and practitioners involved in safety improvement. It still remains difficult to define what we actually mean by ‘safety culture’, even in domains where the term is well established (e.g., the nuclear industry). Some of the difficulties are reflected in the perennial discussions centred on the so-called ‘climate vs. culture’ debate (Mearns and Flin, 1999), others reflect more fundamental conceptual, theoretical and practical issues (e.g., the relationship between safety culture and the systems approach – Reiman and Rollenhagen, 2013).
