ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses mainly on three questions: "What is an organizational culture? What are the main ingredients of a safety culture? And, most importantly, how can it be engineered?" The term engineered' is deliberate. The main principle applies to the acquisition of an effective safety culture. Whereas national cultures arise largely out of shared values, organizational cultures are shaped mainly by shared practices. Organizations with a positive safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety, and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measure. The four critical subcomponents of a safety culture: a reporting culture, a just culture, a flexible culture and a learning culture. Together they interact to create an informed culture which, for our purposes, equates with the term safety culture' as it applies to the limitation of organizational accidents.
