A way out of the impasse: assessing the company culture instead of the safety culture

Adapting values or changing behaviors: academics disagree on how to make progress based on safety culture. This was the theme of René Amalberti’s Industrial Safety Opinion piece "Values/ behaviors: cause or consequence?".

But isn’t this debate simply outdated? The author shifts the analysis to three, key questions:

• Is it reasonable to always rely upon the same set of values and behaviors to optimize safety?
• What can we expect to gain?
• A culture or many cultures?

René Amalberti goes on to propose a new approach: a diagnosis of the corporate culture, rather than the safety culture.