ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to examine the implications of the assumption of shared meaning for safety and to give attention to the related problem of "the management of meaning". Culture change has been viewed as a means of improving corporate performance by securing greater employee commitment and identification with corporate values. B.A. Turner has focused on ways in which organizational learning can be used in safety management and has drawn attention to importance of getting behind appearances in order to gain access to organizational processes. The chapter provides attention to the relationship between corporate culture and safety culture. It addresses the purpose has been to regard the relationship as problematic and to consider the implications for the way in which safety issues. The chapter examines the extent to which the manipulation of corporate culture reduces safety issues to a declared rhetoric supported by artifacts of a "safety culture" which may, in turn, reduce a concern for safety to a cosmetic exercise.
