Diagnosis of safety culture: A replication and extension towards assessing “safe” organizational change processes

Organizational changes that are apparently unrelated to risk and safety management may in fact be very relevant to the level of process and work safety, e.g. based on “objective” parameters like work load and “subjective” parameters like motivation. Therefore, assessments of an organization’s risk quality should also consider change management during major organizational changes. To help such assessments an existing questionnaire used to evaluate safety management and safety culture was extended to include indicators for change management. Results from applying the new instrument at seven petrochemical plants as part of insurance audits are presented. The validity of the previously developed parts of the questionnaire measuring perceptions of operational safety management by means of three scales “Enacted Safety”, “Formal Safety”, and “Technical Safety” and of safety and design strategies by means of 16 items related to various characteristics of managing safety and uncertainty was confirmed. A principal components analysis with the 16 newly developed items for evaluating change management revealed four factors, “Esteem”, “Procedures for Organizational Change”, “Transparence”, and “Vision”, corresponding partially to four content areas deemed crucial for safe organizational change, i.e. reflected radicality of change, support for constructive redevelopment, esteem for employees, and employee involvement. Evidence for the validity of the new scales is provided and the usefulness of the new instrument discussed.