Culture: Safety, Security, Risk & Resilience - Informed individual metrics or an ad-hoc potion of variable views and processes?

Culture within organisations, communities and individuals remains a complex construct. Safety, security, risk and resilience cultures are both distinctly unique but influence, interact and change differently, further compounding the notion of a neat, singular view of what culture is or isn't.

Moreover, each of these cultural dimensions comprises multiple factors, each represented, visible, concealed and expressed in varying ways.

Again, confounding a single statement or assumption that 'culture is....'.

Therefore, the practical question, if not challenge, for any organisation, community or collection of individuals remains,

"what is safety culture, security culture, risk culture or resilience culture and what happens when they interact, come together or compete for resources, priority or attention?"

Culture does not live nor develop in a vacuum. Nor is it static or devoid of individual and collective human influence.

Cultural aspects associated with safety, along with the often overused and unsubstantiated 'safety culture' label remain for many organisations and practices an outlier to security, risk or resilience considerations.

That is, 'safety' is that thing we do with frontline humans and measure or assert in our corporate statements of compliance, care and concern.

It isn't considered in conjunction or adequately integrated with security, risk or resilience.

However, the other end of the spectrum is the catchall practice of making one person or department accountable for all these disparate factors, disciplines and realities with a position title like "Safety, security, health, environment, etc" under the misguided and flawed assumption they are the 'same' thing.

Much can be learned and observed about the real safety culture of an organisation by this practice alone.

However, in practice, legislation and the real-world; safety crime, safety compliance, security threats, negligence, risk and resilience are very much converged, overlapping and symbiotic cultural and practical factors for domestic, national and international organisations.

The below visual attempts to unpack and summarise just some of the specific safety cultural dimensions, for a single organisation in a specific industry.

This frame of reference will remain a benchmark of comparison, highlighting that each factor (safety, security, resilience, risk) has inherently similar challenges that must be mediated, consolidated, traded off or considered in the mix of 'cultural' consideration.

Continuity of service and business continuity routinely compete with these disparate cultural aspects but further identify complex interactions and underlying influences that further moderate, attenuate or distort singular and collective cultural concepts.

In other words, yet another organisational cultural aspect ebbs and flows alongside, around and over the top of safety culture, risk culture, security culture and newly minted resilience culture(s).

However, unlike the relatively sanitised safety culture visual, considerable forces such as structures, rewards, stories, rituals, symbols and power vary daily and routine cultural constructs.

As summarised below.

While management generalists are typically aware of such interactions, practitioners and methodologies routinely lack empirical investigative techniques or scientific evaluations.

In other words, ethnographic, anthropological, sociological and safety/security sciences are neither taught or found within generalist education or practitioners.

Yet most organisational culture narratives and assertions originate from the generalist end of the spectrum, despite the lack of specific skills, methods and education to form said views.

Again, this reveals both organisational culture and matters for consideration from a safety, security, risk and resilience perspective.

Returning to the base terms of reference, we can substitute safety with security in a comparable security cultural consideration.

With this one, simple substitution, it is apparent just how distinctly different safety and security culture become, using identical factor analysis.

In other words, identical factors influence safety and security culture(s) in differing ways and scales inconsistent or at times similar to each other; but pursue differing objectives which created differing levels of resilience and risk mitigation.

In short, a complex prioritisation, trade-offs and decision making is required for just two cultural factors for comparison and integration.

Now let's add 'risk culture'. Again, despite the simple word substitution, the cultural dimensions, context and reality change yet again, despite identical units of analysis.

In practical terms, you now go from 10 cultural factors considered within safety, to now attempting to reconcile and integrate 30 disparate factors (more like 10 to the power of 10) in the name of consolidated safety culture, security culture and risk culture.

All this, BEFORE you attempt to define, measure and assert a 'resilience culture'.

Now, let's introduce the contemporary buzzword, resilience.

The collidescope of terms, concepts, measurable and claims is now complete.

By now, it should be self-evident that even the simplest of claims pertaining to 'culture', that seeks to represent or encapsulate capricious, protean and polycentric concepts such as safety, security, risk and resilience requires considerable evidence and transparency in just how such narratives or measurements were derived.

That is, safety culture, security culture, risk culture and resilience culture remain complex, changing and contextual phenomena within one location, let alone organisation.

Therefore, statements, claims or assertions that just one cultural view, measurement or statement adequately summarised and accurately coveys or measures these factors...should be treated with suspicion.

Therefore, few organisational or life's basic decisions should be based on such narratives, let alone big decisions.

Now introduce cross-cultural (geography, ideology, religion, politics, ethnicity, economics, etc) dimensions to this seemingly static problem of safety culture, security culture, risk culture and resilience culture.

What was complex enough already, now become exponentially more complex. Not just adding a dozen or more units of analysis but many more factors that vary from group(s), projects, departments and business locals. It is now more akin to 10 to the nth degree.

We are now approaching a complex, networked problem that has challenged science, communities and human kind for a long time, like the n-body problem.

That is not to say it is not possible, just that many more specific, transparent datum points and consistent units of analysis are required.

As opposed to those most typified in generic, overarching cultural statements, inclusive of those relating to or representing safety culture, security culture, risk culture and resilience culture. Even if they were to have the same, universal definition or application, which they don't. Much like 'terrorism' or 'crime'.

In sum, culture remains a complex construct for professionals and science.

Culture takes on may forms, including degrees of accuracy when observed, measured or asserted by those not trained nor experienced in cultural study and analysis.

These variances and attenuations are amplified exponentially when considering individual or collective concepts such as safety culture, security culture, risk culture and resilience culture(s).

Many detailed datum points are required, using specific methods, employed by trained and qualified individuals.

Anything less, should be considered less qualitative and not relied upon for major decisions or representative views.

Despite the routine manufacture and distribution of 'culture' statements and metrics....at scale.

Ironically, this practice is a factor influencing and of concern for safety, security, risk and resilience cultural representation, preparedness and protection from harm.

Tony Ridley, MSc CSyP MSyI M.ISRM

Security, Risk, Resilience, Safety and Management Sciences