The Importance of Occupational Health and Safety Culture in Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

Safety culture is a concept often used to highlight the fact that there are social processes in organizations that help or hinder behaviors or outcomes regarding of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS). Thus, the part of workplace culture that concerns health and safety, risks and hazards, is called safety culture. Unsafe attitudes and behaviors in an organization have been demonstrated to partly be a result of workplace culture. Workplace norms have been shown to predict unsafe and risky behavior among employees. Behavior is, however, influenced by many different factors, of which safety culture is one. How well safety rules and regulations are adhered to in an organization is considered to be influenced by culture. A poor safety culture for example have been associated with organizational accidents, such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the two NASA space shuttle accidents. This paper is an attempt to position the place of safety culture and Occupational Health and Safety Culture in Manufacturing Companies.