Safety culture in an aircraft maintenance organisation: A view from the inside

This article deals with a case study about the safety culture of an aircraft maintenance organisation. The case study provides ethnographic accounts based on participant observation, interviews and document analysis. Safety culture is specifically related to the development and growth phase of the organisation and explicitly relates safety culture to production interests. The analysis focuses on the various roles and the tensions between the quality assurance and maintenance management departments, and the way aircraft maintenance technicians (AMTs) in practice deal with tensions between safety and production interests. Theoretically this article stresses the value of a process view on organisational development for the analysis of safety culture and the paradoxical relationship between safety and economic interests.

Research highlights
► Especially in the growth phase of the organisation the safety culture might become subordinated to production interests.
► Ethnographic methods may demonstrate how AMT’s in practice deal with tensions between safety and production interests.
► Differences in power, safety values and time pressure account in this case for deviations from safety standards.
► The most prominent strategy of resistance by AMT’s is work-to-rule and follow the strict way of working.
► Maintenance management and quality management not merely perform different tasks but also serve, and negotiate about, different and contradictory company interests.