The organization cultural impact on accidents: A secondary analysis of the relationship between culture and safety

This study looks at the impact of an organizations culture on its illness and injury rate. It examines what constitutes the safety culture of the organization and establishes a measure that can be used to quantify this culture. Culture cannot be measured directly but surrogate measures are developed that would identify the safety culture of the organization. Numerous latent variables that define the culture of the organization are examined using Principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of safety culture and to identify a measure of an organizations safety culture. The study is based on the premise that the organizational culture, in particular the safety culture is correlated with industrial accidents. The study uses surveys with Likert type scales to analyze the culture of an organization. It uses a survey instrument designed by Simon (1998) to obtain employee opinion, and utilizes the survey data that was collected as a part of a culture change intervention at a division of a Fortune 10 company. Using principal component analysis and factor analysis, to identify the factors that have the greatest impact on the safety culture of the organization, the study uses sub-scales (that define factors like Norms, Structure etc.,) to measure the impact these factors have on the illness and injury rates of the organization. The study also seek to understand the underlying factors that contribute to the safety culture of an organization and whether the safety culture of an organization is dependent on the size of the facility or the country where the company facility is located. To do this, organizational safety culture is investigated at various facilities operated by the same corporation in England, Canada and United States.