IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v21y2018i5p622-644.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring and improving safety culture in organisations: an exploration of tools developed and used in Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • Karolien van Nunen
  • Genserik Reniers
  • Koen Ponnet

Abstract

To support organisations in addressing their safety culture, practical tools have been developed worldwide. Based on such practical tools, it is possible to measure where an organisation is situated regarding its safety culture in order to identify priority areas, formulate appropriate improvement strategies and determine changes over time. In this paper, it is examined which practical tools to measure and improve safety culture are provided on the Belgian market. In total, 15 Belgian tools were identified, of which 8 agreed to cooperate. Amongst the included tools, there is a lot of variation regarding the methods to diagnose the safety culture and the overall procedure to improve the safety culture. The importance to adapt the tool to the specific needs and context of organisations is acknowledged in most of the tools, as well as the importance to use a multi-method approach to measure the safety culture. Also, it is recognised that all hierarchic levels should participate during the process of diagnosing the safety culture. A point of attention is this overall participation during the validation of the results of the diagnosis, and the priority setting of the recommendations, which is mainly done by the higher management. The development of the Belgian tools is based on experience with a focus on direct practical application, which leads to the fact that none of the tools are validated through scientific evidence. Another point of attention is that organisations pay too little attention at the continuity of safety culture research. And finally, the question can be raised if the safety culture tools actually address the concept ‘safety culture’, or if they address only a subset of the concept. When safety culture is addressed, a comprehensive approach should be used, where technological, organisational, human and external aspects are taken into account as interacting and interrelating elements.

Suggested Citation

  • Karolien van Nunen & Genserik Reniers & Koen Ponnet, 2018. "Measuring and improving safety culture in organisations: an exploration of tools developed and used in Belgium," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(5), pages 622-644, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:21:y:2018:i:5:p:622-644
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2016.1235602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2016.1235602
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2016.1235602?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karolien van Nunen & Genserik Reniers & Koen Ponnet, 2022. "Measuring Safety Culture Using an Integrative Approach: The Development of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework and an Applied Safety Culture Assessment Instrument," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-39, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:21:y:2018:i:5:p:622-644. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.