Divergent perceptions of safety culture between occupational groups: the role of national culture

Transcription

1 Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2016 Annual Meeting 1622 Divergent perceptions of safety culture between occupational groups: the role of national culture Morgan J. Tear 1, Tom W. Reader 1, Steven Shorrock 2,3 and Barry Kirwan 2 1 London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK; 2 EUROCONTROL Brétiny-sur-Orge, France; 3 School of Aviation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Many multinational organizations now conduct safety culture assessments at the international level. Research indicates, however, that organizational safety culture is closely tied with national culture, which has implications for how the results of international safety culture assessments are analyzed and interpreted. For example, safety culture within an organization may be influenced by national cultural tendencies for power distance, which refers to the perceived ability for how individuals of low status and influence can engage with individuals who have higher status and influence. Here we report how national power distance norms had a negative effect on the safety culture perceptions of managers, controllers, and administrative staff in Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). Engineers and technical staff, however, were unaffected by national power distance norms. We also show evidence that power distance exacerbates the differences in safety culture perceptions between managers and operations staff. These data have implications for how safety culture interventions in multi-national organizations should be tailored to account for both the national cultures represented within the organization, but also for the different occupational groups that the organization consists of. Copyright 2016 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. DOI 10.77/ Safety Culture INTRODUCTION Safety culture refers to the norms, values, and practices shared by groups in relation to risk and safety (Cooper, 2000). Within safety-critical industries (e.g., nuclear energy, oil and gas, aviation), surveys are often used to evaluate safety culture (Conchie, Donald, & Taylor, 2006; Huber, ; Reason, 17), and these typically measure employee responses to a number of latent dimensions. For example, the commitment of management to safety, the support given by an organization (e.g., resources) to improve safety, incident reporting practices, collaborative activities to improve safety, and communication on safety (Reader, Noort, Shorrock, & Kirwan, 2015). Where responses to such dimensions are shared and positive across an organization, safety culture can be conceptualized as strong, and to have a positive influence upon safety (e.g., people can raise safety concerns) (Guldenmund, 2007, 2010; Joyce & Slocum Jr., 184; Smith, Dugan, Peterson, & Leung, 18). Conversely, negative, opposite, or fragmented perceptions can indicate a weak safety culture, which renders individuals and organizations susceptible to workplace injuries and safety incidents (e.g., risk-taking) (Beus, Payne, Bergman, & Arthur Jr., 2010; Christian, Bradley, Wallace, & Burke, 200; Clarke, 2000; Nahrgang, Morgeson, & Hoffman, 20; Singer, Lin, Falwell, Gaba, & Baker, 200). National Culture and Safety Culture The globalised nature of many high-risk industries means that safety culture assessments are increasingly conducted at an international level (Reader & O Connor, 2014; Sorra & Dyer, 2010). Occupational psychologists have long been aware of the need to examine the relationship between national culture and safety culture (Clarke, 1). Specifically, organizational culture can be influenced by a range of top-down societal factors (Erez & Gati, 2004), including national culture (Reader et al., 2015), language (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2003; Chunlin, Chengyu, & Boben, 1), and progression systems (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004). Of particular interest to researchers is the relationship between organizational culture and the five dimensions of national culture outlined by Hofstede (2001): power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and longterm orientation. According to this model, national cultural processes (e.g. education, political and economic systems, religion, media, etc.) normalize the cognitions and behaviour of individuals within those nations. The influence of national culture is theorized by Hofstede (2001) to transfer into organizational life (e.g. norms for how to interact in asynchronous power relationships, or for rewarding individual or collective performance). Research has supported Hofstede s conceptualization of national culture. For example, cultural dimensions are shown as more similar within a country than between countries (Hofstede, 2002; Minkov & Hofstede, 2012a, 2012b), organizational culture and behaviour in multi-national organizations are shown to vary according to the national cultural norms of the countries where operations are based (Kirkman, Lowe, & Gibson, 2006), and where management practices are congruent with national culture, organizational units are found to perform more effectively (Newman & Nollen, 16).

2 Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2016 Annual Meeting 1623 Power Distance Although not extensive, a growing body of research has examined associations between safety culture and Hofstede s (2001) dimensions of national culture. Promisingly, power distance has consistently been a factor in organizational safety (Antonsen, 200). To reiterate, power distance refers to the extent to which individuals of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally (Hofstede, 2001). High power distances are identified as influencing safety through (1) discouraging the correction of errors by superiors; (2) placing primacy of communication and debate on a superior (Soeters & Boer, 2000); (3) generating unwillingness to challenge authority; and (4) creating asymmetrical communication between management and subordinates (Reader & O Connor, 2014). Conversely, low power distances facilitate open discussion of safety issues and proactive safety actions (Reason, 17). Research indicates a link between power distance and safety culture. For example, studies with Norwegian seafarers have found correlations between power distance and attitudes about safety improvements and conditions at work (Håvold, 2007). Occupational groups and safety culture A common finding within the literature is that occupational groups have differing perceptions of safety culture (Glendon & Litherland 2001; Mearns, Flin, Gordon, & Fleming, 18). In particular, management within an organization often has more positive perceptions than operational staff. This is accounted for by the vantage point of staff on safety (e.g. awareness of efforts to improve safety), proximity to risk (e.g. day-to-day safety concerns), and interactions between sub-groups (e.g. communication on safety). Social desirability is also a factor, with managers artificially inflating their safety culture perceptions above the organizational baseline in order to present a version of themselves in line with the ideal manager. However, after adopting a national culture perspective, power distance is a possible alternative explanation for the differences in perceptions of safety culture between managers and operational staff. Recent cross-european research by Reader and colleagues (2015) has demonstrated that managers perceive safety culture (in Air Traffic Management) more positively than operational staff across 17 European countries. However, the effect varied in different regions of Europe, and was most pronounced across Southern and Eastern regions of Europe, and almost non-existent in Northern Europe. This supports the perspective that interactions between managers and operational staff are critical for developing a shared perspective on safety culture. In particular, it may reflect differences in how operations and management staff communicate on safety (e.g. for sharing employee concerns, or for discussing management commitment to safety) (Clarke & Ward, 2006), with such practices potentially shaped by national culture (e.g. power distance). Understanding these differences will be the focus of future research. The Current Study Here we seek to address whether the regional differences between managers and operations staff can be explained by national power distance norms. That is, does the relationship between occupational group and safety culture differ as a function of power distance? We test the preregistered hypothesis (Tear, Reader, Shorrock, & Kirwan, 2016) that power distance will moderate the observed effect of occupational group on safety culture perceptions. Participants METHOD We used survey responses from 13,616 Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) employees based in 21 European countries. Survey responses were collected between 20 and This research is part of a wider, on-going investigation of safety culture in European Air Traffic management, with over countries being investigated to date. General survey demographics are provided in Table 1. Participants reported their main role at their ANSP: management (n = 152), controllers (n = 6500), engineering (n = 1764), or administration (n = 37). Some respondents reported having no primary role (n = 43) and were excluded from analyses. Thus, the final sample size was 13,573. We collected an average of 64 responses (SD = ) from each of the ANSPs. Due to the sensitive nature of these data and the implications that may have for both the organizations involved, and our subsequent working relationships with those organizations, we opt to withhold reporting the specific nationalities involved. To report information on nationalities would compromise the anonymity of the ANSPs because there are several nations with only one ANSP. Measures Safety culture. Safety culture surveys were part of a mixed-methods investigation of safety culture, whereby results were discussed with staff in workshops and interviews (depending on the size of organization there was 24 to 60 hours of focus group activity). Focus groups resulted in a set of safety recommendations being developed for each ANSP, in coordination with their safety management team. The method for this has been previously described (Mearns et al., 2013). The survey tool used to collect safety culture data was iteratively developed through a series of safety culture investigations prior to 2010 (Mearns et al., 2013). These included staff interviews and workshops, discussions with safety managers, pilot testing, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). The survey reflects a range of safety culture issues specific to ATM, and the six underlying dimensions iterate well-established themes within the safety culture literature (management commitment to safety, collaboration for safety, incident reporting, communication, colleague commitment to safety, and safety support; Guldenmund, 2007). The survey comprised 2 Likert

3 Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2016 Annual Meeting items (1: strongly disagree; 5: strongly agree). A summary score was created by averaging each respondent s scores on each of the six dimensions. Higher scores thus reflect more positive safety culture perceptions. Power distance. Respondents were assigned a power distance score by taking their ANSP s nationality and consulting Hofstede s Power Distance Index (PDI; Hofstede, 2001) to determine the power distance norms for each nation. Occupational group. Respondents indicated their primary occupation at the beginning of the survey. Responses were coded into one of four possibilities: (1) managers; (2) operations staff (controllers); (3) engineers; or (4) administrative staff. Table 1. Staff demographics across 21 ANSPs Total (role ANSP Controllers Managers Engineers Admin missing) Total score below.002, suggesting no observations were particularly influential. Linear relationship between IV and DV. Visual inspection of the P-P plot for standardized residuals revealed a linear relationship between the predictors and the outcome. Multicollinearity. The correlation between power distance and occupational group was not large enough to violate the multicollinearity assumption (r =.087, p <.001). Of potential concern, however, was that the predictors were more strongly correlated with each other (r =.087) than with the dependent variable (occupational group: r = -.037; power distance: r = -.047). Multicollinearity often occurs when two independent predictors actually tap the same latent construct. It is difficult, however, to interpret this multicollinearity because it is unclear how power distance and occupational group would tap into a similar latent construct. Moderation analysis All analyses were conducted with Andrew Hayes PROCESS macro for SPSS (Release 2.15; Hayes, 2013). To test for moderation (model 1), we entered overall safety culture perceptions as the outcome variable (Y), occupational group as the independent variable (X), and national power distance norms as the moderator variable (M). We dummy coded the occupational group factor such that managers was the reference category to which controllers, engineers, and administrative staff were compared against. Products were also mean-centered. Results are summarized in Figure 1 and Table 2. RESULTS Assumptions Normality in the dependent variable. The distribution of scores on the safety culture variable was normally distributed, as determined by non-significant results for both the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests of normality (K-S statistic (df=12) =.13, p =.200; S-W statistic (df=12) =.54, p =.6). Outliers. As this is a very large dataset, the ability for any one observation to influence the regression analysis is low. Consequently, all observations have a Cook s Distance Figure 1. The interactive effect of occupational group and power distance on safety culture perceptions. A. Managers. B. Controllers. C. Engineers. D. Administrative staff. Main effects. The overall model accounted for a significant amount of variance in safety culture, R2 =.060, F(7, 13565) = 5.13, p <.001. Power distance was a

4 Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2016 Annual Meeting 1625 significant predictor, suggesting that safety culture diminished with increasing amounts of power distance scores, (b = -.006, p <.001). Each dummy coded variable was also a significant predictor in the model, with controllers (b = -.358, p <.001), engineers (b = -.126, p <.001), and administrative staff (b = -.208, p <.001) all having lower perceptions of safety culture than managers. Interactions. The PROCESS macro created interaction terms between each of the dummy coded variables and the power distance variable and entered them into the model. The addition of these interaction terms accounted for a significant amount of additional variance in safety culture, R 2 ch =.005, F(3, 13,565) = 26.47, p <.001. Specifically, the interaction terms for the managers vs. controllers and managers vs. engineers were significant (controllers: b = -.002, p =.021; engineers: b =.006, p <.001), whereas the interaction term for administrative staff was not significant (b = <.001, p =.88. Simple slopes. We examined the simple slopes of power distance norms on safety culture for each occupational group. The safety culture perceptions of managers (b = -.006, t = -6.7, p <.001), controllers (b = -.008, t = , p <.001), and administrative staff (b = -.006, t = -.28, p <.001) were all negatively affected by increasing national power distance norms. Interestingly, engineers and technical staff appear unaffected by national power distance norms, as their levels of safety culture perceptions were constant across all levels of power distance (b <.001, t = -.057, p =.54). Simple effects. Finally, we tested the equality of conditional safety culture means for the occupational group factor at low (-1 SD), mean, and high (+1 SD) values of the moderator. The mean safety culture perceptions for each occupational group were significantly different at all levels of the moderator: low: R 2 ch =.00, F(3, 13,565) = 51.14, p <.001; mean: R 2 ch =.0, F(3, 13,565) = 152.2, p <.001; and high: R 2 ch =.026, F(3, 13,565) = 1.6, p <.001). The R 2 ch values were smallest at low levels of power distance, but roughly similar at mean and high levels. This suggests that increasing power distance from low to mean and high values increased the amount of variance accounted in the differences between conditional means, confirming that regions with medium-to-high amounts of power distance exacerbate the difference in safety culture perceptions between managers and operations staff. Table 2. Moderation model and coefficients table Coefficient t p constant <.001 Power distance <.001 Managers vs. Controllers (D1) <.001 Managers vs. Engineers (D2) <.001 Managers vs. Administrative staff (D3) <.001 Power distance * D Power distance * D <.001 Power distance * D3 < Model: R 2 =.060, F(7, 13565) = 5.13, p <.001 Interaction: R 2 ch =.005, F(3, 13,565) = 26.47, p <.001 Theoretical Implications DISCUSSION Past literature has shown managerial staff report more positive perceptions of safety culture than operational staff, and has often been explained as a social desirability effect, or that of positioning within an organization (Glendon & Litherland 2001; Mearns, Flin, Gordon, & Fleming, 18). In this study we examined whether differences in perceptions of safety culture are potentially a product of national cultural tendencies for power distance. Namely, that high power distances will result in reduced communication between operational and managerial staff (e.g. on operational staff concerns for safety, managerial activities to improve safety), leading to divergent perceptions of safety culture between occupational groups. This builds on work showing differences between occupational groups varying across European regions (Reader et al., 2015). We tested whether differences in national power distance norms could account for those regional differences, and partially replicated the effect found by Reader and colleagues. That is, a main effect of occupation type, whereby managers reported safety culture perceptions greater than all other occupation groups. The analyses also revealed a significant interaction of occupation group and power distance that power distance affects safety culture for most occupational groups, but has no statistical effect on the safety culture perceptions of engineers. Finally, the results confirmed that the difference between managers and operational staff is exacerbated at medium-to-high levels of power distance, thus providing an alternative explanation for why managers might have more positive safety culture perceptions, and also accounting for past research showing regional differences in safety culture perceptions between occupational groups. To take these findings further, it may be the case that the original social desirability effect is a by-product of national culture. That is, managers may be motivated to present an ideal version of themselves to others more so in cultures where power distance is greater. Further research measuring social desirability could determine how national culture impacts managers projected versions of themselves. Practical Implications The results indicate the ever-growing importance in moving away from one-size-fits-all safety-culture interventions. What the data have demonstrated here is that occupational groups can be differentially affected by their countries national culture. Specifically, the analyses revealed that managers, controllers, and administrative staff in nations with high power distance norms had lower perceptions of safety culture than staff in nations with norms for low power distance. This was not the case for engineers and technical staff, whose perceptions on safety culture in their organization seem unaffected by power distance. We speculate that the ways in which safety might manifest for engineers are categorically different to those of managers, controllers, and administrative staff. For example,

5 Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2016 Annual Meeting 1626 engineers and technical staff, whose work involves the implementation and maintenance of the technical systems that support air navigation, might have clearer demarcations for safety concerns than do controllers, who might think of safety in various shades of grey. Specifically, if a technical system is not functional, then that represents a clear safety issue for engineers (e.g. the system is broken and must be fixed ) and power distance becomes less influential. In organizations like ANSPs, power distance can interfere with safety culture because employees might believe that their concerns will not be shared with their superiors. If, however, there are clear demarcations and policies for what an occupational group believes constitutes a safety concern (e.g. the system must be fixed ), then employees can be assured that their superiors hold the same beliefs about safety, thus rendering national norms for power distance less influential on employees safety culture perceptions. Thorough investigation of this speculation via qualitative workshops with occupational groups would help understand why engineers safety culture perceptions were unaffected by national power distance norms, whereas the safety culture perceptions of managers, controllers, and administrative staff were affected. Limitations There are three immediate limitations in this work. First, we suppose that power distance leads to less communication between management and operations staff but we do not directly measure that relationship. 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