Safety in Complex Organizations: A Cultural Approach

Managing safety in today’s complex organizations is no easy feat. When looking at safety from a cultural perspective, organizations are seen as cultures, with their own internal dynamics and ways of interacting with, and interpreting, the outside world. Looking at organizations from a cultural perspective improves our ability to lead and manage them by increasing our understanding of these internal dynamics shaping their behavior. This book offers a theoretically sound yet practical approach to organizational and cultural issues. It investigates their influence on safety and acknowledges the complexity and dynamic nature of today’s organizations.

The book is a comprehensive introduction to a cultural approach to safety. It explains the main principles in thinking about safety from a cultural perspective and provides the reader with tools for monitoring and developing culture for safety in organizations. Methods for developing a cultural approach to safety are introduced, and typical approaches to assessing culture for safety are critically reviewed. It draws on more than two decades of experience that the author has in the safety field as a researcher, consultant, and practitioner and includes practical examples, lessons learned, and research findings from several safety-critical fields, including the nuclear, healthcare, construction, petrochemical, and transportation sectors. The reader will develop a thorough overview towards developing their own cultural approach to safety through overviews of resilience and complexity thinking, organizational psychology, management sciences, leadership research, psychological safety, normalization, drift, decision making, leadership, and communication.