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- Title
A STUDY OF THE ORGANISATIONAL SAFETY CULTURE OF THE ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION INDUSTRY IN NEW SOUTH WALES: IDENTIFYING ORGANISATIONAL SAFETY CULTURE.
- Authors
Rutter, Arthur
- Abstract
The research question involves an attempt to discover the safety culture that may exist specifically within the electricity distribution industry in New South Wales and whether it is positive or negative. I consider that the organisational culture, including safety culture could be preventing a further reduction in the accident rate within the industry. The industry is engineering based and as such is very systems orientated, there are various layers of defences used in an attempt to prevent serious incidents and damage to equipment. These defences are a mixture of hard and soft applications as defined by (Reason, 1997:8) as being hard systems such as physical barriers to prevent un-authorised access and contact; the soft defences include rules and procedures, regulations, training, permit to work and supervision. However I consider that an important factor that has not been measured and assessed is the relationship between organisational safety culture influencing attitudes and values of workers in the industry which could be impacting upon efforts to reduce the accident/incident rate. As I have indicated previously the industry is very systems orientated and has is own regulatory system, codes of practice and guidelines, in addition to the State OHS legislation and references to Standards Australia. But as (Hopkins, 2005:5) points out 'The right culture is necessary to make safety systems work', and indicates that unless everyone within an organisation is committed and constantly focussed upon safe working attitudes and behaviour the systems do not operate effectively. The difficulty is how do you effectively measure safety culture within an organisation? Is it through reduced incident/accident rates, reduction in absenteeism (sick leave), and increased productivity (it would be difficult to assign any portion of increased productivity to safety culture)? Is the safety culture positive or negative? A negative safety culture would negate the effectiveness of safety systems put in place; a positive safety culture would reinforce and complement the safety systems.
- Subjects
AUSTRALIA; ELECTRIC power distribution; INDUSTRIAL safety; ACCIDENT prevention; EMERGENCY management; INDUSTRIAL hygiene; SYSTEM safety
- Publication
International Employment Relations Review, 2007, Vol 13, Issue 2, p59
- ISSN
1324-1125
- Publication type
Article