• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Psychosocial Safety
    • Resiliencing
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Just Culture / So, You Want Culture Change

So, You Want Culture Change

November 30, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 8 Comments

imageGrappling with culture is one of the issues Safety does poorly. After all, the industry and its STEM gestalt are not well equipped to even define culture well. This is most evident in the OHS Body of Knowledge (https://www.ohsbok.org.au/). Once again, unless the industry is prepared to step outside of STEM, it isn’t going to get far in addressing the issue of culture. Indeed, it seems Safety finds it best to just put it into the too hard basket, simply because the industry is not prepared to tackle a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge. Perhaps, the current strategy demonstrates that culture is too much of a ‘wicked problem’ to tackle. Indeed, when STEM looks at ‘gaps’ in knowledge within its own paradigm it doesn’t even consider the critical issue of ‘knowledge cultures’ (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540091.2016.1273880; https://sts.univie.ac.at/en/research/completed-research-projects/transdisciplinarity-as-culture-and-practice/; https://www.sciartmagazine.com/uploads/6/0/8/9/6089526/towards_a_transdiciplinary_culture_by_julia_buntaine.pdf)

Artistic knowledge, poetic knowledge, indigenous knowledge, anthropological knowledge, philosophical knowledge, educational knowledge, theological knowledge, transdisciplinary knowledge, phenomenological knowledge, existentialist knowledge, social psychological knowledge, discourse theory knowledge, cultural theory knowledge and semiotic knowledge are all represented in cultures that stand outside the knowledge culture of STEM. No wonder Safety struggles with culture and doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Even its maps of meaning (semiosis) in knowledge are infused with STEM metaphors (https://safetyrisk.net/why-metaphors-matter-in-risk/) and dominate the OHS BoK.

So, if you are challenged in your organisation by elusive cultural issues perhaps put down the OHS BoK and start with Yuri Lotman (1990) ‘Universe of the Mind, A Semiotic Theory of Culture’ or Lotman (2013) ‘The Unpredictable Workings of Culture’. Unfortunately, you won’t find any of the knowledge cultures listed above in the OHS BoK or even discussion of ‘knowledge cultures’ in any of the OHS BoK framework or any reference to the work of Lotman (and many others critical for understanding culture). Indeed, when one looks at the OHS BoK for essential texts on culture dozens of critical texts are missing.

The best way to achieve some success in cultural understanding and change is to expand and broaden ones understanding of culture itself. Perhaps this is why organisations struggling with the issue of culture and safety don’t seem to get anywhere. When an institution thinks resilience can be engineered (https://safetyrisk.net/why-resilience-cannot-be-engineered/ ), or that fallibility can be denied (http://visionzero.global/) or that culture is behaviourism (throughout the BoK) you really do have a problem in understanding humans and ecological foundations of culture.

One of the biggest issues for the safety industry in understanding culture is the adjective it puts before the word ‘culture’ that shapes its cultural discourse – ‘safety’. If one ‘frames’ ones’ understanding of culture through the worldview of safety then it is not likely that much about culture will be tackled in response to concerns. Indeed, most of what is about in the safety industry on culture is simply a confusion of culture for behaviourism or systems. The language of systems and behaviourist metaphors are used interchangeably for the word ‘culture’. The classic doofus understanding is that culture is ‘what we do around here’, the classic behaviourist language that makes Safety think that culture can be observed and measured.

When the SPoR team help organisations tackle the challenges of culture we approach the issue of culture and safety from a completely new view outside of STEM. We bring a broad transdisciplinary approach to the challenges of culture and risk utilising the diversity of the SPoR team. The trouble is, tackling a wicked problem is not simple, easy or quick and it seems that organisations and CEOs are seduced by the safety quick fix and safety silver bullet, which is why nothing changes.

We had some good news this week that one of the SPoR team in Sweden has been given the green light to pilot a SPoR approach to risk in a tier one organisation involved in nuclear power. Similarly, we are working with a two global tier one companies in forestry and oil and gas, in culture change in safety with good results at early stages. Culture shouldn’t sit in the ‘too hard’ basket, neither should it be perceived as some safety trinket. Tackling is doable but requires a different worldview and stepping outside the blinkered STEM paradigm.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
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)

  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’! - May 24, 2023
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process - May 23, 2023
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble - May 21, 2023
  • Understanding Language Influencing, A Video - May 21, 2023
  • Safetie - May 21, 2023
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.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Just Culture, Robert Long, Safety Culture, Social Psychology of Risk, STEM Tagged With: SPoR

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. bernardcorden says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:19 PM

    I don’t expect too many safety sycophants have come across Thomas Merton, you won’t find any mention of him in the Ayn Rand Fountainhead of Safety or OHS BOK.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      February 13, 2020 at 7:31 PM

      When your worldview is defined by an industry that measures and creates meaning through zero then, mechanistic, numeric and object metaphors abound. Knowledge is then defined by knowing-that, not knowing-how. This is why safety has become such an abstract paper-based phenomena. We make workers ruminate and reflect on SWMS, risk assessments, pyramids, bow ties and curves yet none of this is used in actually make decisions in daily practice. Nothing in the BoK on intuitive knowledge, habit and the unconscious is telling.

      Reply
  2. bernardcorden says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:19 PM

    I found the recent class action and ruling on negligence following the Queensland 2011 floods very interesting. Their operating manual was used as evidence against SunWater et al.

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      February 13, 2020 at 7:31 PM

      So engineers write a manual and then in the heat of the moment ignore it. I wonder if they are going to turn to engineering to find the resilience they need to understand human judgment and decision making that doesn’t make logical sense? Unfortunately, calculative thinking and paper-work rarely help in a crisis, but a an ethical framework in understanding intuitive knowledge from non-STEM knowledge culture is invaluable in such times.

      Reply
  3. bernardcorden says

    November 30, 2019 at 10:44 AM

    I found the recent class action and ruling on negligence following the Queensland 2011 floods very interesting. Their operating manual was used as evidence against SunWater et al.

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      November 30, 2019 at 11:12 AM

      So engineers write a manual and then in the heat of the moment ignore it. I wonder if they are going to turn to engineering to find the resilience they need to understand human judgment and decision making that doesn’t make logical sense? Unfortunately, calculative thinking and paper-work rarely help in a crisis, but a an ethical framework in understanding intuitive knowledge from non-STEM knowledge culture is invaluable in such times.

      Reply
  4. bernardcorden says

    November 30, 2019 at 9:52 AM

    I don’t expect too many safety sycophants have come across Thomas Merton, you won’t find any mention of him in the Ayn Rand Fountainhead of Safety or OHS BOK.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      November 30, 2019 at 10:10 AM

      When your worldview is defined by an industry that measures and creates meaning through zero then, mechanistic, numeric and object metaphors abound. Knowledge is then defined by knowing-that, not knowing-how. This is why safety has become such an abstract paper-based phenomena. We make workers ruminate and reflect on SWMS, risk assessments, pyramids, bow ties and curves yet none of this is used in actually make decisions in daily practice. Nothing in the BoK on intuitive knowledge, habit and the unconscious is telling.

      Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,521 other subscribers

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Chris. on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Pierre Joubert on Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • James on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Admin on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe

The KISS of Death in Safety

Is Your Safety World Too Small?

You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

When Safety (Zero) is Abusive

Hands Up the Best Safety Fraud!

Communicating Professionally in Risk

How NOT to be Professional in Safety

How NOT to do Anything About Culture in Building and Construction

Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS
  • Safety Acronyms

Recent Posts

  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • My Story is Better than Yours
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process
  • The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble
  • Understanding Language Influencing, A Video
  • Safetie
  • You are NOT the Sum of Safety
  • Update on SPoR in India, Brazil and Europe
  • It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Safety at the Margins
  • Research Basics for Safety
  • We Need Communities and They Need Us
  • Researching Within The Safety Echo Chamber
  • Confirmation Bias, Risk and Being Offensive
  • Lemmings for Lemmings in Leadership and Risk
  • Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging
  • Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • Can There Be Other Valid Worldviews Than Safety?
  • Evaluating Value by the Value of What You Don’t Know
  • Reality vs Theory, The Binary Divide
  • No Paradigm Shift with BBS
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Is Your Safety World Too Small?
  • What Does Safety Achieve?
  • In Praise of Balance in Risk and the Threat of Extremism
  • We are all equal
  • You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • What in the (Risk & Safety) World is Imagination?
  • iCue Engagement Process
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • For the Monarchists of Safety
  • The Sully Effect
  • All Things Must Pass in Risk
  • Scapegoating and Safety
  • Understanding Habit, Habituation and Change
  • Don’t Mention the War
  • Safety in Design for Who by Who?
  • Beyond ‘What We Do Around Here’
  • Asking the Wrong Questions
  • When Safety (Zero) is Abusive
  • Mandala as a Method for Tackling an Ethic of Risk (a Video)
  • Safety Cosmetics
  • Visualising the EHS Role
  • Towards Dumb
  • Workshops with Dr Long – Vienna, Austria 26-30 June 2023
  • Visual, Verbal and Relational Mapping in Risk Assessment
  • Abduction in Risk and Safety
  • Creating Myths and Rituals in Safety
  • The Safe Christmas Psychosis

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

Safety Gives Me the Right over Other Rights

Who is the Enemy and What War is Safety Fighting?

Safety and Risk Culture Cloud

The Different Levels of Wrongness!

Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk

How to Leave the Safety Industry

Safetie

Post Graduate Studies in the Social Psychology of Risk

Risk Boldly

Critical Thinking At Risk

Dumbs for Safety

Personhood and Risk

A Scaffolder’s Journey in SPoR – A Podcast

Knowing When to Break the Rules

The Shock of Homeostasis

Selling Out Safety

Workshops with Dr Long – Vienna, Austria 26-30 June 2023

Adverse Events: Eliminate or Anticipate?

What or Who Is Safety?

Safety as a Worldview

The Deficit Focus and Safety Balance

Body Memory and Safety

Safety Aphorisms and Platitudes

Deconstruction and Reconstruction for Safety

Turning Neuroscience into Behaviourism

Impacts of Cognitive Dissonance in the Workplace

Sexual Stereotyping Can Be Deadly

WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture

Tentative at Tooleybuc

SPoR Workshops Vienna 26-30 June

Three Cheers for the Safety Literalists

Measurement in Safety, You’ve Got it All Wrong

Failure Must be an Option

What SPoR Network is.

What in the (Risk & Safety) World is Imagination?

Embracing Diversity & Critical Thinking to Help us ‘Create’?

Confirmity in Conformity

Intuition and Safety

Risk and Safety as a Social Psychological Problem

Why Safety is Inescapably Theological

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,521 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY

x
x