Diagnosis of safety culture in safety management audits

Based on the sociotechnical systems approach, an understanding of safety culture as deeply rooted assumptions about the interplay of people, technology, and organization in their relation to safety is presented. As a complement to audit methods aimed at assessing formal safety management, a questionnaire was developed which allows some indications of these assumptions to be captured by providing data on perceptions regarding operational safety, safety and design strategies, and personal job needs. Analyzing response patterns of different occupational, hierarchical, and organizational groups within a company in combination with formal audit results and the communicative validation of both in a feedback meeting can help the auditors as well as the members of the company to gain a deeper understanding of safety management and safety culture in that company. Results from seven audits in petrochemical plants are presented and discussed with respect to the validity and practicability of the chosen approach. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.