Organisational culture is a concept often used to describe shared corporate values that affect and influence members' attitudes and behaviours. Safety culture is a sub-facet of organisational culture, which is thought to affect members' attitudes and behaviour in relation to an organisation's ongoing health and safety performance. However, the myriad of definitions of 'organisational culture' and 'safety culture' that abound in both the management and safety literature suggests that the concept of business-specific cultures is not clear-cut. Placing such 'culture' constructs into a goal-setting paradigm appears to provide greater clarity than has hitherto been the case. Moreover, as yet there is no universally accepted model with which to formulate testable hypotheses that take into account antecedents, behaviour(s) and consequence(s). A reciprocal model of safety culture drawn from Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986. Social Foundation of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.) is offered so as to provide both a theoretical and practical framework with which to measure and analyse safety culture. Implications for future research to establish the model's utility and validity are addressed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
