TY - JOUR
T1 - Safety culture and power
T2 - interactions between perceptions of safety culture, organisational hierarchy, and national culture
AU - Tear, Morgan J.
AU - Reader, Tom W.
AU - Shorrock, Steven
AU - Kirwan, Barry
PY - 2020/1
Y1 - 2020/1
N2 - Practices that involve power dynamics are integral to maintaining organisational safety (e.g. speaking-up, challenging poor behaviour, admitting error, communicating on safety), and staff engagement in these is assumed to be shaped by perceptions of safety culture. These perceptions, in-turn, are associated with (1) positions within an organisational hierarchy (which makes power-related acts more or less threatening), and (2) societal values for power distance (e.g. challenging authority). With a sample of 13,573 of air traffic control staff (controllers, engineers, administrative, and management) from 21 national air traffic providers, we reconfirm the observation that managers perceive safety culture more positively than frontline staff (hypothesis 1), and that workers in countries with established values for hierarchy and power report safety culture as less positive than those from countries with low power distance (hypothesis 2). We then, for the first time, examine the interaction between these two factors, and establish that differences in safety culture perceptions between those higher in the hierarchy (management) and those lower in the hierarchy (air traffic controllers and administrative staff) are exacerbated by national contexts for large power distance (hypothesis 3). The study contributes to the literature by theorising the role of power in safety culture theory, and its influence upon safety culture perceptions. Moving forward, safety culture research and interventions may benefit from considering how power exists and manifests at the level of superior-subordinate dynamics.
AB - Practices that involve power dynamics are integral to maintaining organisational safety (e.g. speaking-up, challenging poor behaviour, admitting error, communicating on safety), and staff engagement in these is assumed to be shaped by perceptions of safety culture. These perceptions, in-turn, are associated with (1) positions within an organisational hierarchy (which makes power-related acts more or less threatening), and (2) societal values for power distance (e.g. challenging authority). With a sample of 13,573 of air traffic control staff (controllers, engineers, administrative, and management) from 21 national air traffic providers, we reconfirm the observation that managers perceive safety culture more positively than frontline staff (hypothesis 1), and that workers in countries with established values for hierarchy and power report safety culture as less positive than those from countries with low power distance (hypothesis 2). We then, for the first time, examine the interaction between these two factors, and establish that differences in safety culture perceptions between those higher in the hierarchy (management) and those lower in the hierarchy (air traffic controllers and administrative staff) are exacerbated by national contexts for large power distance (hypothesis 3). The study contributes to the literature by theorising the role of power in safety culture theory, and its influence upon safety culture perceptions. Moving forward, safety culture research and interventions may benefit from considering how power exists and manifests at the level of superior-subordinate dynamics.
KW - Hierarchy
KW - National culture
KW - Organisational culture
KW - Power distance
KW - Safety culture
KW - Values
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056405896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ssci.2018.10.014
DO - 10.1016/j.ssci.2018.10.014
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85056405896
SN - 0925-7535
VL - 121
SP - 550
EP - 561
JO - Safety Science
JF - Safety Science
ER -