Successful occupational health and sfety management is frequently viewed as being contingent on the establishment of a `safety culture' in an organisation. This paper describes the experiences from research conducted in five large German and British companies. The results show that safety management and safety culture are heavily influcenced by restructuring and downsizing processes. Safety hazards receive the most attention whereas psycho-social hazards closely linked to new organisational structures tend to be ingnored. Proponents of a safety focus overlook the cultural complexity in large organisations and the impact of modern work organisation on the physical and mental welfare of employees. The paper calls for a more differentiated treatment of the conept of safety culture and an imporovement of the communicative competence of modern businesses.
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