Accident Rates VS. Culture - National and Organizational Cultures; Suggested Interventions to Modify Organizational Safety Cultures

摘要

This paper looks at the accident rate relationship to the anthropological cultural dimensions that are common across all societies, as initially defined by Geer Hofstede that resulted from the factor analysis the IBM multi country study that was run from 1967 to 1972 including approximately 116,000 people. Further the paper looks into accident relationship to the organizational cultural dimensions “1. Process oriented vs. results oriented 2. Employee oriented vs. job oriented. 3. Parochial vs. professional. 4. Open system vs. closed system. 5. Loose control vs. tight control. 6. Normative vs. pragmatic. In addition, the relationships to language primacy and structure along with levels of organizational stress are touched upon in an attempt to encompass the cultural "gestalt" affecting accident rates in industry." This paper will identify some of the variables associated with accident rates and suggest interventions. Hopefully, this paper will provide some guidance in identifying important aspects affecting safety in organizations.