This paper deals with the influence of organizational communication on safety. Accidents are actually caused by individual mistakes. However the underlying causes of accidents are often organizational. As a link between these two levels - the organizational failures and mistakes - I suggest the concept of role distance, which emphasizes the organizational characteristics. The general hypothesis is that communication failures are a main cause of role distance and accident-proneness within organizations. A general classification of communication is presented, and safety communication and obstacles are distinguished. The analysis at various levels does not falsify all my hypotheses, and several dimensions of communication seem to be of interest for the safety.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management) in its series Research Report with number
01A24.