Current perspectives on safety culture

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Idioma: 
English
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Frank
Guldenmund
University Lecturer
Delft University of Technology
Países Bajos

Frank Guldenmund is lecturer at the Safety Science Group of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He works primarily in the field of occupational safety, where his research involves modelling and assessing (the quality of) safety management systems. Within this context his interest was raised in the topic of safety culture, which he has been pondering since the late 90s.

The interest in safety culture has hardly died down since it appeared in the spotlights some twenty years ago. Scholars and safety professionals alike, have been attempting to pin down this elusive concept, to make sense of it, to measure it, and to change it. Currently, three distinct views on safety culture can be distinguished; an anthropological view, focussing on the research process rather than on the actual outcome; an analytical view, focussing on particular aspects of the concept that can be assessed through questionnaires; and a pragmatic view, using the concepts of growth and maturity to describe a safety culture. Next to these, another view on safety culture will be proposed: culture as a process. The development of culture can be described with a five-step process, based on a theory of social construction. Equipped with this process, culture researchers and practitioners can apply interventions that might influence the development process of culture in an organisation. Concluding, it will be argued that changing culture is a continuous process rather than a single effort.

Fechas: 
Thursday, 22 May 2014 - 11:30am
Sede/Lugar: 
Sala C