Risk perception and safety cultures in organizations

Abstract

Organizational safety is a recent field of research in behavioral sciences. In this paper we aim at (1) stressing the importance of social factors on the origin of work accidents (on the classification of a situation as dangerous, on the judgement of probabilities associated with accidents, ando n the individual decision for a safe behavior). This point supports our claim that accidents cannot be conceived as the error of a single individual, but as the resulto f ongoing social processes. (2) showing that the organizational strategies for accident prevention are dependent on a more global view of the organization. Specifically, we maintain that safety culture should be conceived as a part of a more global organizational culture.