SPE 86623
Cultural Maturity Model: Health and Safety Improvement through Involvement
Mark Fleming, Assistant Professor, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Scott Meakin, Senior TLM advisor, Petro-Canada, East Coast, St Johns Newfoundland, Canada.
Copyright 2004, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.
This paper was prepared for presentation at The Seventh SPE International Conference on
Health, Safety, and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production held in Calgary,
Alberta, Canada, 2931 March 2004.
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Abstract
Petroleum companies increasingly recognize the importance of
the cultural aspects of health and safety management. This is
due in part to the conclusion that a poor safety culture
contributed to a number of disasters. Many Petroleum
companies have measured their safety culture in order to
identify improvements. Questionnaires are commonly used,
as they are an efficient method to collect large data sets that
can be analyzed statistically. Unfortunately, safety culture
surveys have limitations; for example, they provide little
assistance in identifying interventions to address areas of
concern. A potential solution to this limitation is the use of a
maturity or evolutionary framework. In the UK the offshore
oil industry and the Health and Safety Executive
commissioned a study to develop a health and safety maturity
framework1. The study produced a cultural maturity model
based on capability maturity models used in the software
industry. This framework is similar to Westrums three level
safety maturity model2. These and other models were used as
the basis of a Canadian cultural maturity model. This model
consists of 5 levels of maturity (Documenting, Controlling,
Engaging, Participating and Institutionalizing) and 10
elements. This paper describes the development of the model
and the results of a cultural maturity project conducted in
Petro-Canadas East Coast Operations.
Introduction
High hazard organisations (e.g. petrochemical, aviation,
medicine) increasingly recognise the importance of the
cultural aspects of safety management. This is due in part to
the findings from investigations into major disasters in the
petrochemical industry (e.g. Piper Alpha) and other industries
such as nuclear power (e.g. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl),
marine transportation (Exxon Valdese and Zeebrugge) and
passenger rail transportation (Ladbrook Grove and Clapham
Junction). The surprising thing about these investigations is
that they all concluded that systems broke down
catastrophically, despite the use of complex engineering and
technical safeguards. These disasters were not primarily
caused by engineering failure, but by the action or inaction of
the people running the system. The causes in each case were
malpractices that had corrupted large parts of the socio-
technical system p2173.
In parallel with the wider recognition of the importance of
psychological aspects of safety, the concept of organisational
safety culture came to the fore. The term safety culture was
introduced by International Atomic Energy Agency in their
report on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986
where the errors and violations of the operating procedures
which contributed to the accident were seen by some as being
evidence of a poor safety culture at the plant3. Safety culture
has been described as the most important theoretical
development in health and safety research in recent decades4.
Although the importance of safety culture is widely accepted,
there is still little agreement about what is meant by the term.
To an extent, safety culture has been a victim of its own
success, because the explosion of interest in safety culture has
led to a range of conceptualisations, nearly one for each
research team working in the area. A recent review of the
research literature identified 16 separate safety culture
definitions5. The issue is further confused by the related
concept of safety climate. It appears that those who
introduced the term safety culture ignored the earlier concept
of safety climate described by Zohar6. Once the concept of
safety culture became popular in the early 1990s the question
of its relationship with safety climate arose. Over the last
decade several attempts have been made to distinguish
between the two terms (see Cox and Flin7), but safety climate
is still often used interchangeably with safety culture.
The Advisory Committee on the Safety of Nuclear
Installations (ACSNI) produced the most widely accepted and
comprehensive safety culture definition. They defined safety
culture as the product of individual and group values,
attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of
behaviour that determine commitment to, and the style and
proficiency of, an organisation's health and safety
management. Organisations with a positive safety culture are
characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by
shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by the
efficacy of preventive measures8 p23. That is to say safety
culture consists of values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies
2 SPE 86623
and behaviour of the people that makeup the organisation. In
an organisation with a positive safety culture there are high
levels of trust, people agree that safety is important and that
safety management systems are effective. This definition
implies that a poor safety culture would be one where people
do not trust each other, do not share the perception that safety
is important nor that preventative measures are effective.
Safety culture influences workers (or groups of workers)
view of the world (i.e. what is important and how they
interpret new information) and is stable over time. It can be
likened to the personality of the organisation. Safety culture
transcends the organisational members that share the culture,
as it is the things that are passed on and endure. In essence
safety culture is independent of people who are currently part
of the organisation, the culture will exist after all these people
have left. New members of the organisation informally learn
the safety culture, through observation, social feedback and
trail and error.
The utility of the safety culture concept depends upon the
extent to which it is related to health and safety outcomes. An
organisations safety culture may influence both the likelihood
of an organisational accident occurring and the occupational
accident rate. Fortunately organisational accidents do not
occur frequently and therefore only limited research has been
conducted to investigate the link between safety culture and
organisational accidents. The evidence that links safety
culture with organisational accidents comes from
investigations into major disasters. As mentioned above,
many recent investigations into major disasters have a
remarkable similarity in that they identify deficiencies in the
safety culture as the underlying cause of the disasters.
The safety culture concept originated from the
investigation into the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and it is clear
that safety culture inadequacies have contributed to other
disasters, such as Piper Alpha and the recent Space shuttle
disaster. While these high profile incidents have focused
attention on safety culture there is a need for more scientific
evidence of the importance of safety culture.
The two main sources of evidence that provide support for
the validity of safety culture, are the analysis of accidents and
questionnaire studies. If safety culture influences accident
rates then it should be possible to identify safety culture
factors that contributed to the cause of accidents. A review of
142 accidents in two different sectors (Steel industry and
Medicine) revealed that between 35-40% of accident causes
could be attributed to organisational factors and of these a
third were directly attributable to employee attitudes9.
Although the author separates organisational factors into
structure, strategy and goals and safety culture all of these
would be included in the definition of safety culture used here.
This study provides good evidence that safety culture is a
causal factor in individual accidents.
Numerous studies10 11 have linked accidents to safety
attitude questionnaire responses, with lower accident rates
associated with positive attitudes. The majority of studies
have adopted a similar methodology of comparing the
responses of individuals who self-report accident involvement
with those who report no accident involvement. Brown and
Holmes12 using the instrument developed by Zohar6 found that
accident and non-accident groups differed in their perceptions,
with non-accident group reporting more positive perceptions.
In the UK offshore oil and gas industry Mearns, Flin, Fleming
and Gordon11 found that accident and non-accident
respondents differed in their assessment of safety measures
and on seven of the ten safety attitude factors, for example
speaking up about safety and supervisor commitment to
safety. Lees3 survey of 5198 nuclear power plant employees,
found that accident and non-accident groups differed on 17 of
the 19 safety climate factors measured. In a follow up survey
Lee and Harrison13 of 683 nuclear power employees on three
sites they found that 24 of the 28 factors from their
questionnaire were linked to accident performance. Research
studies in other industrial domains14 have also linked safety
climate to safety performance.
All of these studies take the individual as their unit of
analysis and therefore have examined how individual attitudes
are linked to individual accident involvement. The extent to
which this indicates anything about organisational factors is
questionable. There is a need to use the organisation as the
unit of analysis rather than individuals. A study conducted by
Simard and Marchand15 randomly selected 258 plants from 20
manufacturing industries in Quebec, Canada. One hundred of
the 258 agreed to participate in the study. The plants were
split into high and low accident plants on the basis of their
accident rate relative to their industry average. Data were
collected through a battery of 13 questionnaires completed by
senior managers, middle managers, worker representatives and
first line supervisors. They found that the development of the
safety management system and supervisor safety leadership
differentiated between high and low accident organisations.
While this is an interesting study frontline workers were not
surveyed. A recent study conducted in the UK offshore oil
and gas industry by Mearns, Whitaker, Flin, Gordon and
OConnor16 compared differences between 13 installations on
self-completion questionnaires. Rank correlations were used
to examine the relationship between company accident data
and factors on the Offshore Safety Questionnaire. They found
significant negative correlations between accident rates and
health surveillance and promotion and safety auditing.
The above indicates that there have been numerous studies
demonstrating the link between self-report accident rates and
safety attitudes. Taken together there is convincing evidence
for the validity of the safety culture concept.
The above studies used self-completion questionnaires to
measure safety culture and safety climate. Questionnaires
appeal to researchers because they enable them to reach a
large number of respondents in an efficient manner and
questionnaires produce data that can be analyzed statistically.
In contrast, the information produced by questionnaire surveys
are often less helpful to managers of the organisation
participating in the survey. Company managers can be
overwhelmed with the amount of data produced and often the
information is presented in scientific language. In addition, it
is difficult to know what a good result is and to identify
interventions to address areas of concern. The difficulties of
safety climate/ culture surveys was succinctly put by an oil
industry manager, when he said: Safety climate surveys are a
bit like describing the water to a drowning man, they tell you
how bad things are but do not help you to solve the problem.
SPE 86623
Developing the Cultural Maturity Model (CMM)
The limitation of safety climate surveys highlight the need for
a solution focused approach to safety culture measurement and
improvement. There is a need for a developmental framework
that enables organizations to locate their safety culture on a
maturity continuum. This framework should also provide
guidance on what organizations need to do to move along this
maturity continuum. Recently a number of these frameworks
have been developed. For example, the UK HSE and the
STEP change initiative commissioned a research project to
produce a framework to assist the oil industry to make better
use of the results from safety culture research conducted in the
offshore oil industry, (see Fleming1). This project produced a
five-stage cultural maturity model by reviewing safety culture
models such as the three-stage safety culture model developed
by Dupont17 and capability maturity models developed in the
software industry. The three levels in the Dupont model are
dependant, independent and interdependent. Dupont used implement the plan and monitor implementation.
this model to assess their maturity using a safety audit
methodology. The capability maturity concept developed by
the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), is used as a
mechanism to improve the way software is developed18. The
five levels of the software capability maturity are Initial,
Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimizing. Software
capability model uses objective indicators to establish the level
of maturity, but the cultural model commissioned by the HSE
did not provide a similar diagnostic tool.
Interestingly the model produced by the HSE
commissioned research appears to be similar to a safety
maturity framework used by Shell international. This model is
based on a safety framework developed by Westrum19 in 1988.
In his model companies could be classified into three levels of
maturity Pathological, Calculative and Generative. This
model was further developed by Hudson20 to produce a five
stage model by introducing reactive and proactive stages. This
model forms the basis for Shell Internationals safety culture
assessment tool called Hearts and Minds. This proprietary
tool consists of 16 elements. The measurement process
involves employees reading statements describing different
levels of maturity for each of the 16 elements. Employees
select the element that matches their assessment of the culture
at their location.
The three safety culture models (Shell, Dupont and HSE)
all attempt to place an organization or a site on safety maturity
continuum in order to identify the actions required to move to
the next level of maturity. The similarity of the Hearts and
minds model and the HSE model is striking and surprising
since they were developed in isolation from each other. The
independent development of similar models gives confidence
in the validity of the concept. Both of these models appear to
address the limitations of safety climate surveys, but they are
proprietary models so organizations cannot use them freely.
In addition, there is no published information on the reliability
and validity of these models or their associated measurement
instruments. Therefore there is a need to develop a new model
that is available for organizations and academic institutions, so
that this concept can be independently tested and evaluated.
The cultural maturity model described in this paper was
developed to fulfill these needs.
3
An extensive literature review was conducted to develop a
new cultural maturity model. The literature review included
publications describing capability maturity models, safety
maturity models, existing cultural maturity models and general
safety culture literature. The results were used to develop an
initial draft CMM. This model was disseminated to a range of
industry representatives, academics and regulators in order to
generate debate and criticism. These discussions highlighted
the need for some indication of the improvement process.
Usefully the STEP change behavioral issues task group report
Changing Minds21 provided a potential solution as they had
integrated their maturity model into a Total Quality
Management (TQM) framework. This involved including the
Assess, Plan, Implement and Monitor stages of the
continuous improvement process. This addition illustrates the
improvement process, as organizations need to assess their
current safety culture, use the results to develop an action plan,
Organizations repeat the process at regular intervals to
continually improve.
Figure 1 Cultural Maturity Model
Cultural maturity model
Documenting Controlling Engaging Participating Institutionalising
Level 1 Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
The CMM presented in Figure 1 is adapted from the model
presented in the Changing Minds guide. The model consists
of five developmental stages. An organization can improve
their safety culture by assessing their current level of maturity
and removing the weaknesses identified, while maintaining
their strengths. This is a sequential model and therefore
organizations cannot jump levels. More importantly
interventions that are appropriate for an organization at level 4
may not be appropriate for an organization at level 2 and vice
versa. For example, an employee led behavior modification
program may be very successful in organization trying to
move from level 3 to level 4, but the same program may fail
completely in an organization at level 1.
Cultural maturity elements. Safety culture consists of a
number of factors or elements. It was therefore important to
capture these elements in the current framework. There are a
number of sources of information to identify the main safety
culture elements; these include comparisons between high and
low accident companies and safety climate surveys. Since
safety culture is associated with occupational accidents then
4 SPE 86623

organisations that have a lower accident rate than similar - Statement selection/ card sorting.
organisations are also likely to have a positive safety culture. Irrespective of the method used to present the statements to
ACSNI (1993) conducted a comprehensive review of participants, they select the statement that they believe best
empirical research into differences between high and low describes their culture. Each participants selection is
accident organisations. individually recorded. If a questionnaire is used participants
Evidence of the features of a positive safety culture is also circle the appropriate statement, if a data projector is used then
provided by the results of questionnaire surveys that have participant vote for their selection and if card sorting is used
linked responses with either self-report accidents or company then they select the appropriate card and record their choice on
accident data. Combining the results of the low accident a separate sheet. Once their selection has been recorded then
organisation and safety culture reviews produced the safety they are presented with the statements for the next element.
culture elements listed in Table 1. These features or elements Once the measurement exercise is completed participants
were consolidated to produce the ten elements of the cultural provide more detail about the safety culture within their
maturity model. Table 1 summarizes the features of a positive organisation. Participants work through each of the ten
safety culture identified by previous research and lists the elements by firstly identifying their organisations strengths
safety culture element designed to measure this feature. for each element. They then identify areas for improvement
and the practical actions that could be taken to improve the
Table 1: Developing the safety culture elements
safety culture and move to the next level of maturity.
Features of a positive Ten elements of the
Cultural maturity case study
safety culture cultural maturity model
The cultural maturity measurement and improvement process
- Visibility of management
High levels of management was implemented within Petro-Canadas East Cost Operations
commitment
safety concern, involvement in late 2002 and early 2003.
- Supervisor visible
and commitment Petro-Canadas experience provides an excellent example
commitment
Safety prioritised over profits of how an organisation can assess its cultural maturity,
- Production pressures identify actions and develop new structures and programs to
and production
Good organisational learning - Organizational learning implement these actions. The cultural maturity assessment
Frequent informal safety process produces a large amount of qualitative data.
- Job and safety Qualitative information provides a rich picture of the safety
communication
communication culture, but it can be difficult to communicate to others. When
Good job communication
Good plant design, working - Human and physical external consultants undertake the cultural maturity
conditions and house keeping resources assessment, they develop an in-depth understanding of the
Confidence in safety rules, organisations safety culture. Unfortunately this
- Rules and procedures
procedures and measures understanding remains with the consultants as the organisation
Trust in workforce to manage relies solely on the consultants report, which has by its nature
- Trust levels
risk less depth. This case study is particularly interesting since
Satisfaction with training - Training internal consultants (employees) undertook the assessment
High levels of employee process, with guidance from an external academic. The
participation in safety central role played by internal consultants in the project was
Acceptance of personal vital to its success, as they developed a deep understanding of
- Workforce involvement
responsibility for safety the issues and used this knowledge to drive the improvement
Willingness to speak up about process. Since Petro-Canada does not separate safety from
safety health, this project involved assessing their health and safety
culture as opposed to their safety culture. This broader focus
involved developing statements to measure participants
Establishing level of cultural maturity
attitudes to both health and safety and not just safety.
An organisations level of maturity is determined on the basis
This measurement and improvement process consists of
of employee perceptions of the ten safety culture elements.
four stages, including:
One method for establishing the level of cultural maturity is an
- a senior management workshop,
employee focus group or workshop. The workshop usually
- training internal facilitators
consists of between seven and twelve participants who are all
- 34 safety culture workshops
at the same level of seniority. This workshop commences with
- identification and the implementation of actions to
a measurement exercise to establish participants perception of
improve the safety culture.
the level of maturity on each of the ten elements. This
The project commenced with a senior management
involves presenting participants with statements describing the
presentation, to explain the process, outline likely results and
five levels of maturity for each of the ten elements.
the types of interventions required to improve. This
Participants are presented with one element at a time. There
presentation highlighted both the benefits and the risks
are a number of different ways to present the statements to the
involved in this type of measurement exercise. It was
participants, including:
important for the management team to give their informed
- Questionnaires,
support to the project, as they are ultimately responsible for
- Data projector with electronic voting
implementing the resulting action plan. Once the senior
SPE 86623
management team approved the project internal facilitators
attended a one and a half day training workshop. The
facilitator training session provided facilitators with:
- an overview of safety culture theory and the
background to the cultural maturity model,
- an understanding of the importance of safety culture
and the link to illness and injuries,
- the mechanics of how to run the workshop,
- the skills to facilitate the discussion,
- the strategies to assist them in handling difficult
questions and how to avoid trying to solve problems
raised during the session.
At the end of the training session each facilitator had an
opportunity to practice facilitating a group and they received
feedback on their performance.
Onshore workshops were scheduled in collaboration with
each department to facilitate maximum participation. Onshore
employees and contractors were invited to participate in a
safety culture workshop scheduled for a specific time and
location. Offshore worker workshops were scheduled to
coincide with a planned onshore training event.
Each safety culture workshop consisted of 10-12
participants from the similar occupational groups and the same
level of seniority. Employees at different levels of seniority
were not included in the same group as this may hinder frank
and open discussion. The workshop commenced with an
introduction about the process and the rationale for the cultural
maturity exercise. Participants were informed of the ground
rules for the session including confidentiality, how the
information produced would be used, importance of respecting
other participants and the timescale between the workshop,
receiving feedback and actions taken. The latter point was
important because there was going to be a time delay between
the workshops and actions taking effect on the ground and it
was important to manage expectations.
Following the introductions the participants undertook the
cultural maturity assessment exercise. This involved
individually presenting participants with ten sets of statements
corresponding to the safety culture elements. Each set of
safety culture elements consisted of five statements; one for
each level of maturity described in figure 1. Participants read
each of the five statements and then independently selected the
statement that in their opinion was the closest description of
their experience of working at their current position. Once
they had selected the statement they recorded their answer and
moved onto the next set of statements.
On completion of the measurement exercise individual
responses were collected and the results displayed to the
group. The group then, through an open dialogue forum,
provided more information about the current health and safety
culture within Petro-Canada. They identified strengths and
opportunities for improvement and practical steps required to
move to the next level of maturity for each element. The
facilitator captured the comments made on a flip chart and
sought feedback from the group about the accuracy of the
facilitators summary. The information captured on the flip
charts was transcribed for future synthesis and analysis.
In total, 340 people participated in cultural maturity
workshops. These consisted of 96 offshore workers and 244
onshore personnel, which was a participation rate of 92%. Of
5
significance is the participation of employees and contractors,
and full participation by all functional groups including
operations, engineering, business services etc. Involving all
employees in the measurement process demonstrates a
significant commitment to health and safety, as the workshops
alone required over 1000 hours of employee time, since each
one lasted over three hours.
Participants safety culture statement selections provided a
quantitative measure of their health and safety attitudes. The
individual ratings of the safety culture were entered into a
database, by giving the statement selected a score from 1 to 5
corresponding to the level of maturity it described. Since the
cultural maturity model is a developmental framework it is
important to be confident that a specific level of maturity has
been achieved. This is a challenge when establishing culture
maturity since health and safety culture consists of attitudes
and beliefs, which vary between members of the organisation.
It is therefore not appropriate to select the average level of
maturity, as half the participants may have judged the maturity
to lower than the average. The level of maturity for each
element was determined by identifying the highest level of
maturity, which two thirds of participants (67%) had indicated
that that level of maturity had been achieved (i.e. they selected
that level or a higher level of maturity).
The qualitative analysis of comments captured during the
workshop involved grouping the comments under broad
headings. A large amount of information was produced, since
there were 34 groups, producing at least 5 pages of comments
each. The groups generated over 400 strengths and identified
over 700 actions for improvement, which is an average 20.6
for each group. There was a lot of commonality among the
groups, so the transcripts were analysed to identify common
themes. The transcripts were initially summarised by
occupational group (e.g. maintenance). The occupational
summaries were then analysed to identify common themes
across the organisation to produce an overall summary. The
qualitative analysis produced 28 strengths and 37
opportunities for improvement. To ensure the accuracy of the
qualitative analysis, two people separately coded the
transcripts and then compared their results. There was a high
degree of agreement and any differences were resolved
through discussion.
The results of the cultural maturity assessment provided
further evidence that Petro-Canadas East Coast Operations
has a positive health and safety culture. Participants
identified numerous strengths providing Petro-Canada a solid
platform to build towards their corporate objective of creating
a zero harm environment. The fact the Petro-Canada chose to
undertake this exercise was often cited as evidence of the
positive culture. Having said that the participants also
identified a number of weaknesses and actions that could be
taken to further improve the culture. These actions have been
prioritised and are currently part of a strategic implementation
plan.
Initially it was anticipated that there would be differences
between the onshore and offshore workgroup in their
assessment of the health and safety culture. In reality the two
groups had remarkably similar assessments of the culture.
Both onshore and offshore participants rated the level of
maturity to be the same for all but one element, organisational
6 SPE 86623
learning, where the onshore participants gave higher ratings
than the offshore group.
The comments made by onshore and offshore personnel
were also remarkably similar. For example, onshore and
offshore employees assessments of the visibility of
management commitment to safety were remarkably similar.
The following are examples of behaviours that offshore
participants identified as being indicative of management
commitment to safety:
- Managers attend health and safety meetings.
- Managers take action on clear-cut safety issues (e.g.
shutting down for ice conditions) and easy to fix
issues.
- Managers do not consistently follow through on
actions identified in a perceived timely manner.
- Managers do not always lead by example (e.g.
working over 12 hours per day).
The following are examples of behaviours that onshore
participants identified as being indicative of management
commitment to safety:
- Commitment to health and safety is demonstrated by
their response to high profile events, e.g. closing the
building during snowstorms.
- Some managers demonstrate their commitment
through involvement in health and safety, e.g. office
inspections and seeking input on safety.
- On occasion health and safety issues appear to take
too long to be resolved and or addressed.
- At times managers appear to be too busy to dedicate
adequate attention to health and safety issues.
Onshore and offshore participants also identified similar
improvement actions. The Offshore participants indicated that
the maturity of the visible management commitment element
could be improved by:
- Improving the close out time for health and safety
actions or by responding to the initiator to assure
them that issue is being progressed.
- Reducing the workload for the offshore management
so that they can spend more time out on the plant.
- Ensuring that offshore management regularly
participate in discipline health and safety meetings.
The Onshore participants indicated that the maturity of the
visible management commitment element could be improved
by:
- Improve response time to health and safety issues
raised or identified.
- Reprioritisation of workload to ensure managers
dedicate adequate attention to health and safety.
- Leaders to visit work areas frequently to monitor
activities and to informally discuss health and safety.
A report summarizing the results of the cultural maturity
assessment exercise was provided to both management and the
workers. In addition, the results were presented to the Loss
Management Leadership Team, chaired by the Vice President
East Coast Operations and consisting of key members of the
senior management. This team dedicates time on a monthly
basis to ensure that health and safety priorities are being
progressed and that appropriate focus and resources are put
towards health, safety, and the environment. As a result of this
work, the Loss Management Leadership Team has embarked
on a full review of its Environment, Health and Safety
strategy, including best practices, and is focusing on the areas
of leadership, people, systems, and processes to implement
their short and long term improvement plans and actions. In
addition, Petro-Canadas East Coast Operations plans to re-
assess its cultural maturity in 2005 to measure progress against
those improvement actions.
Conclusion
The cultural maturity concept is a new development in the
safety culture literature. It offers promise, as it is a solution
focused safety culture assessment process. In addition, the
assessment process itself is part of health and safety culture
improvement and is a mechanism for employee involvement.
The process also fills a current gap in the literature as it
incorporates both quantitative and qualitative safety culture
measurement.
Since the cultural maturity concept is relatively new there
is limited research on the validity of any of the models
currently being proposed. There is a need to assess the
relationship between the models in order to establish the
extent to which they are describing the same things. Since all
the models imply that organisations can be placed on a
continuum from a poor safety culture to a positive culture,
they should all be measuring the same thing. There is also a
need to test the reliability and validity of these newer
measurement instruments. In addition this new model may
provide an opportunity to develop more objective audit tools
that can be used to assess the safety culture.
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