Self-Designing Safety Culture: A Case Study in Adaptive Approaches to Creating a Safety Culture

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Abstract
This Case Study represents an ongoing commitment on the part of the United States Forest Service to improve safety culture. It focuses on the contribution of a small group of leaders and researchers who engaged in interdisciplinary research and application of theory to create active dialogues in the agency and to change the organization’s approach to accident and incident investigation. This small group of practitioners and researchers recognized that an organization’s reaction to events shapes culture and influences workers to perform in certain ways. Commonly this influence is positive. It can benefit production, collaboration, communication, mission completion, and even safety. However, it can adversely affect trust when, with perfect hindsight, we point to individual failures and label them as causal. This case study will explore three significant pathways that led to an examination of safety culture, a challenge of contemporary models of safety culture, a recognition of the importance of language, and ultimately to interventions designed to create a safer work environment; the creation of a principle-based approach is designed to increase the capacity of the organization and workforce to learn, engaging the workforce in dialogues designed to challenge existing beliefs and the creation of an agency response to accidents and incidents that focuses on context rather than blame.

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