CULMA summary report

Accident investigations and empirical studies have shown that human and organizational failures dominate in most incidents and accidents [7]. More and more accidents in various safety critical organizations are attributed to organizational factors such as norms, procedures, responsibilities, managements systems and company culture [1, 3, 8]. On the other hand, it has been acknowledged that organizational culture can support the safety of the overall system and promote both efficiency and safety of the employees [17, 20, 21]. The emphasis on safety science has been shifting from individual errors to organizational factors and their safety impacts. A major challenge is to assess and change the culture before it leads to accidents. There has previously been little research on how to assess the organization of a NPP and how to identify the risks associated with various organizational phenomena proactively. Consequently, no coherent theory of organizational factors and safety exists. Thus, there was a need for a research project focusing on both practical cases studies and theoretical work on organizational factors.