Stian Antonsen

Safety Culture Assessment: A Mission Impossible?

How, if at all, is it possible to assess aspects of organizational culture and the way culture influences safety? This question concerns the possibility of proactive assessments: whether it is possible to ‘predict’ if an organization is prone to having major accidents on the basis of safety culture assessments. The article presents an empirical analysis of this question by comparing the results of a quantitative safety culture assessment on the Norwegian oil and gas platform Snorre Alpha, with the results of a qualitative investigation after a major incident on the platform. The two descriptions of the same culture are dramatically different. The lack of concurrence between the two descriptions suggests that safety culture surveys may have little predictive value.

The Commoditization of Societal Safety

New public management has led to major institutional changes in the sectors operating critical infrastructures. The previously integrated utility companies have been dismantled and are now run, regulated and organized more like private entities. This paper proposes two concepts that may aid the analysis of these organizational changes and the consequences they may have on societal safety. Commoditization refers to the process where work is sought transformed into atomistic standardized products to be ordered on a market. Modularization refers to the creation of discrete entities coordinated by market mechanisms and standardized interfaces. We argue that commoditization of work and modularization of organizational entities pose challenges to some of the informal characteristics of high-reliability organizations, with recognized importance especially for crisis management. This is illustrated by examples from Norwegian electricity network operators.

One size fits all? Safety management regulation of ship accidents and personal injuries

Safety management regulation is an important supplement to market forces to establish a sufficient safety level in high-risk industries. The accident statistics in Norwegian maritime passenger transportation display a paradox: personal injuries have decreased while ship accidents have increased in the period during which safety management has been regulated (the International Safety Management Code was effectuated in the late 1990s). We interview regulators, shipping company management, and crewmembers about their practices and opinions regarding safety management regulation and use these data to explore how this regulation influences safety management practices to prevent different types of accidents. This study underlines earlier research showing that regulation serves to ‘raise the bar’ by heightening the industry levels of safety investments and organizational safety awareness. In addition, our results suggest that safety management regulation in maritime transportation is mostly effective for preventing personal injuries in cases in which the personal have sufficient time and resources available, and the procedures are consistent with seafarers’ professional values. For ship accidents, such as groundings, other causal factors come into play. We find that the negative consequences of regulation (proceduralization) in particular influence the performance of safety-critical tasks, such as navigation. This may explain why personal injuries have decreased while ship accident frequencies have continued to increase in spite of the regulations aimed at improving safety.

Reliability Consequences of Liberalization in the Electricity Sector: Existing Research and Remaining Questions

The generation, transmission and distribution of energy are among the most vital prerequisites for the functioning of modern societies. Since the early 1990s, the energy sectors of Western societies have been through a process of institutional restructuring, where large state-owned monopolies have been divided into several independent organizations. Also, the organizations responsible for providing energy, like most other industrial organizations today, have made increasing use of outsourcing strategies. Taken together, these developments represent a significant change in the framework conditions for the energy sector. How this development affects the reliability of energy supply and the capacity for effective crisis management is an important question from both a research perspective as well as from a societal point of view. This article reviews the current literature on these issues, aiming to identify research gaps in the existing literature. Several research gaps are identified.

Team Leadership in a High-Risk Organization The Role of Contextual Factors

Some small groups perform their tasks in high-risk settings, where team leadership is crucial for the ability to deal with danger. However, we still know little about how the high-risk context may affect this ability. In this article, we draw on a single-case study to investigate team leadership in a high-risk organization. Present theories depict a rather static view on team context, which we argue do not comply with the complexity and dynamic environment of a high-risk organization. We show that in such an environment contextual factors can be of great importance to the internal dynamics of small groups at a different level and matter than previously thought. We argue that effective team leadership hinges upon how team leaders interpret and make sense of contextual factors. We believe that viewing team leadership in this light will contribute to a new understanding of the small group in relation to its surroundings.

Occupational safety in a globalized construction industry: a study on Polish workers in Norway

Abstract Polish workers are the largest group of migrant workers in Norway and are particularly well represented in the construction industry. According to several studies, migrant workers are more prone to occupational accidents than the native workers are. This difference is often attributed to poor communication and lack of linguistic skills. We explored factors affecting occupational safety related to migrant workers with an emphasis on communication, culture and language through interviews with Polish and Norwegian workers. The study shows that the construction industry in Norway mainly focuses on language as an issue. Culture is seen as a contributing factor, but is somewhat neglected. Fewer measures to cope with challenges related to migrant workers were found for cultural issues as compared to linguistic. However, the study shows that cultural aspects are at least as important. This gives implications for safety management in the construction industry. This paper suggests considering cultural aspects more in safety management related to migrant workers to achieve the desired safety focus at construction sites.

Key Issues in Understanding and Improving Safety Culture

The aim of this chapter is to highlight three key issues that safety researchers and practitioners should consider as part of a cultural approach to the study and improvement of safety. The three issues are: (1) the relationship between integration and differentiation in safety culture research, (2) moving from descriptions of safety cultures to improvement of safety, and (3) the possible downsides of a cultural approach to safety. The chapter argues that a better understanding of boundary processes between groups is vital for a cultural approach to safety improvement and gives a set of general principles for the design of improvement initiatives. Some limits and limitations to the cultural approach to safety are also discussed.

Organizational Challenges Regarding Risk Management in Critical Infrastructures

Understanding the interconnections between critical infrastructures is a demanding task. This is even more the case when one includes their organizational contexts. In this chapter, we discuss some of the organizational challenges that have to be addressed when analysing and managing risks that involve several infrastructure sectors. The infrastructures of today are often run by networks of private and public entities, rather than single utility companies. Consequently, the number of organizations that need to be involved to map, analyse and manage risks that cross-sectors is increasing. The organizational changes also imply that work is managed and coordinated in ways that imply a stricter focus on efficiency and accountability with regard to core tasks and responsibilities. We argue that cross-sectorial safety management requires other organizational qualities as well. We outline a landscape where technologies become increasingly interconnected at the same time that the organizations managing them become increasingly fragmented. Risk identification and management requires increased transparency between companies that have few incentives to share information or cooperate. We present a set of recommendations and suggestions with relevance for public agencies and for infrastructure owners on how to address the organizational and institutional challenges born out of these processes.