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You are here: Home / Robert Long / Culture About Much More Than Structure

Culture About Much More Than Structure

April 23, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 4 Comments

Culture About Much More Than Structure

One’s assumptions about what defines culture limits or expands culture itself. One thing is for sure, culture is about much more than organizational structures and systems.

culture cloudIndeed, culture is such a wicked problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem) that defining culture structurally or systemically creates far more problems than it solves. Organisational structures are a small part of what creates culture.

When one looks at the SIA Body of Knowledge and some contemporary safety views on culture there is so much missing. If one seeks cognitivist, positivist and behaviourist research one will get definitions of culture that are burdened with the limitations of those ideologies. This is where Safety goes, to the comforts of what is known not to a broad transdisciplinary approach to risk and safety. This is what the SIA BoK offers, a very limited understanding of culture. No wonder Safety doesn’t know much about how to effect cultural change.

If one accepts a transdisciplinary view of culture then one would include aspects of: anthropology, theology, religion, phenomenology, dialectical existentialist and social psychology completely missing from the SIA BoK and other contemporary views in safety about what defines culture. Here is a list of some critical factors/ideas missing from current definitions of culture in safety.

· Religion and theologies in culture

· Semiotics

· Artefacts-as-semiosis

· Aesthetics in culture

· Critical factors in education and learning theory

· The Collective Unconscious (Jungian approaches to culture)

· Archetypes

· Social psychological dynamics

· Wickedity

· Theories of consciousness

· Critical and cultural theory

· Discourse theory

· Political dimensions of culture

· Philosophical and ideological dimensions of culture

· Phenomenological and existentialist approaches to culture

· Anthropological understandings of culture

Indeed, when one looks at the current approaches to safety conversations and incident investigations all of these vital factors in culture are missing.

One therefore gets the closed outcomes one seeks from a closed definition of culture and the simplistic idea that one can affect culture by the modification of systems, behaviours and structures.

Dr Long will be offering his three day program on culture in Canberra on 11,12,13 September 2019 – https://cllr.com.au/product/culture-leadership-program-unit-15/

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Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Culture Silences in Safety – Memes - June 27, 2022
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Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

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Filed Under: Robert Long, Safety Culture, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: culture, wicked problems

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob Long says

    April 27, 2019 at 1:53 PM

    Ah Bernard, safety is a choice you make! A language made in the heaven of safety to persecute the non-believers who don’t work safe!

    Reply
  2. bernardcorden says

    April 27, 2019 at 12:17 PM

    This is the same organisation that is running a symposium on silica in early May 2019 using the slogan…Unmasking those who don’t work safe and the response from our peak safety body and its Pecksniffian acolytes is silence.

    Reply
  3. Rob Long says

    April 27, 2019 at 11:42 AM

    Similarly, recent publications in safety suggesting culture is all about structure and organising. More positivism, behaviourism and cognitivism and then Safety wonders why nothing changes and the bureaucracy gets worse.

    Reply
  4. Bernard Corden says

    April 27, 2019 at 9:07 AM

    The following links provide access to the NSW Government Centre for Work Health and Safety or its Room 101.

    Much of the language such as behaviour modification with suprasurveillance has sinister overtones of eugenics:

    http://www.centreforwhs.nsw.gov.au/about-us/our-culture

    http://www.centreforwhs.nsw.gov.au/about-us/our-team/research-stream

    “O, brave new world that has such people in’t!” – William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

    Reply

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