Strengthening the safety culture for organizational sustainability

Abstract

The term ‘sustainable development’ can be defined as satisfying the needs of the current generation, without jeopardizing the future generation's ability to meet their needs. In terms of organizations, a Sustainable organization concerns the original momentum of the business continuity of the organization. Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in general plays a key role in supporting business activities and delivering economic prosperity for the organization. Thus, OSH becomes a necessity for organizational sustainability. Organisational culture is a concept often used to describe shared corporate values that affect and influence members' attitudes and behaviours. Safety culture is a sub-facet of organizational culture, which is thought to affect members' attitudes and behaviour in relation to an organisation's ongoing safety and health performance. This paper aims to investigate the factors that influence safety culture positively in order to support the sustainability of the organization. A literature synthesis on organizational sustainability, occupational safety and health, safety culture, definitions of safety culture, components of safety culture and way to strengthen a safety culture are presented. The research findings highlighted that a safety culture mainly comprises of three components, namely, attitudes- both individual and organizational, work environment of and OSH systems occupied. Further few factors that influence safety culture positively were distinguished as management commitment to OSH, employee involvement and empowerment, proper OSH systems and feedback mechanisms, and continuous monitoring of OSH systems.