Industrial accidents not only provoke a decrease in human capital; they also generate financial losses due to disruptions in industrial processes, damage to production machinery and technology, and harm to the firm’s reputation. They consequently have a negative effect on the competitiveness and economic potential of both companies and countries. Their consequences highlight the need to develop strategies to prevent accidents, or at least to cushion their adverse impacts (Khan & Abbasi, 1999b),
Currently, it is recognised that safety management plays an important part in achieving andmaintaining a high level of safety (Mitchison & Papadakis, 1999) and in reducing losses. A safety management system reflects the organisation’s commitment to safety, and it is an important ingredient in employees’ perceptions about the importance of safety in their company. This system comprises a set of policies and practices aimed at positively impacting on the employees’ attitudes and behaviours with regards risk, thereby reducing their unsafe acts. Its aim is to raise awareness, understanding, motivation and commitment among all workers. Thus, the safety management system can be regarded as an antecedent of the firm’s safety climate, with this being understood as the employees’ attitudes and perceptions about the importance the organisation attaches to safety (DeJoy, Schaffer,Wilson, Vandenberg, & Butts, 2004).
In line with our theoretical framework we now discuss the interaction between safety and organisational culture. Overall the safety standards in the researched organisation were definitely regarded as appropriate by most of the employees. However, assessing safety standards is not the primary aim of this article. Our aim was to investigate the (changing) meanings of safety in relation to organisational culture. More specifically, we studied the inner texture of safety culture in Martin’s (2002) terms of fragmentation, integration and differentiation.
The above conclusions lead us to safety management system can be defined as the set of persons, resources, policies and procedures that interact in an organised way to reduce damage and losses generated in the process and in the workplace. In order for this system to be effective and achieve a sustained reduction in the accident rate, it must be integrated into the daily work of the organisation and encourage both the safe behaviour of the workers and their participation, for which it is essential that the upper management be strongly committed to it. Likewise, this system must be comprehensive, taking into account its interaction with other business management systems such as quality management and environmental management and it must be based on the philosophy of continuous improvement, leading towards corporate excellence.
Written by : Squadron leader Somkait Hoonsakul
