Safety Models, Safety Cultures: What Link?

Abstract

In this introductive chapter, Claude Gilbert, President of the FonCSI “strategic analysis” group on safety models and safety culture, shares with us the group’s initial findings on this topic. This text was also used as the introduction to the research seminar organised in June 2016, key step of the project that led to this book. Depending on what is meant by “model”, the way to address the link between safety models and safety culture will be different, ranging from straightforward to very complex. This chapter adopts a viewpoint focused on the actors concerned by safety, and questions how they are led to “navigate” through a world of constraints and opportunities. It highlights the importance to consider what is “already there” (company cultures), what may drive the organisations choices among the multiple offers available on the “safety culture ideas’ and methods’ markets”. It ends up giving food for debate by proposing some research avenues to help industrial organisations better meet their expectations in terms of safety culture.