The Use and Abuse of “Culture”

This well-known paper from Hopkins (found in several forms, book chapters, articles, presentations) critically challenges some core assumptions of safety culture.

In short, directly quoting the paper:

(1)??? Culture is a characteristic of a group, not an individual, and talk of culture must always specify the relevant group

(2)??? Organisations have it within their power to ensure that organisational culture over-rides national cultures

(3)??? The most useful definition of the culture of a collectivity is its set of collective practices—“the way we do things around here”

(4)??? In the organisational context, it is usually better to use culture as a description of group behaviour, rather than as an explanation for individual behaviour

(5)??? Organisational cultures depend on the structures that organisations put in place to achieve desired outcomes

(6)??? The distinction between emergent and managerialist views of culture is misleading

(7)??? The term safety culture is so confusing it should be abandoned.

While in anthropology and sociology culture is a ‘basic concept’, safety culture is said to be a johnny-come-lately. And following on 20 years after another critical paper on safety culture, “confusion reigns” around what safety culture is and represents.

1) Culture is a group characteristic

A common approach to culture change in organisations is said to focus on changing vales and attitudes of workers, or the ‘hearts and minds’.

Hopkins argues that “There is an implicit assumption here that culture is a characteristic of individuals”, but culture is a “characteristic of groups, not individuals”.

Organisations instead of having ‘a culture’ have multiple cultures [**sub-cultures; others describe cultures as micro, macro and meso]. These cultures may overlap and fragment into subcultures, “but always the discussion refers to the characteristics of groups and subgroups, not individuals”.

Hence, discussion of culture should always involve specifying the group.

He provides an example of a company that believed that safety mindfulness can’t be turned on and off at the front gate, and required people to be cultivating the attitude 24-h a day. Hopkins disagrees with the assumptions – arguing that people can, in fact, be part of different cultures.

People may be interested in rock climbing or part of a motorbike group which will have different cultures to their work culture.

2) There’s differences between national Versus organisational cultures

Here there’s a discussion about how sometimes national cultures can “over-ride the corporate culture [leaders] are trying to create”, and he draws on a study which concluded as much.

However, this effect isn’t a foregone conclusion and organisations can overcome national cultures if they’re willing to devote the necessary resources. He provides an example of a global company operating in Korea, and how Korean national culture was attributed to a high fatality rate; something unacceptable with the European management. The company was said not to have accepted this fatalistic view of national culture.

Hence, “Organisations have it within their power to ensure that organisational culture over-rides national cultures”.

Hopkins also challenges the idea that culture change is a slow process, arguing that it may not be 5-7 years for substantial change to take place but sometimes immediately.

Defining culture

Lots of definitions of culture exist, where some attempt comprehensive and include “so many components that they lack focus”. Anthropology focuses on collective meanings, whereas organisations typically define it as values or practices.

Hopkins prefers collective practices, and he particularly likes “the way we do things around here”. He asserts that it’s actually more sophisticated than it appears, since “around here” emphases the culture of some group. Second, the “way we do things” emphases the collective –we, and it has a normative element.

That is, it’s said to carry the connotation of right or wrong, or appropriate, and the judgements stem from shared assumptions, values and norms.

He thinks this definition and its “simplicity and concreteness … enables us to avoid most of the conceptual turmoil that surrounds the term”. In contrast, other definitions of culture “lose their way because culture is an abstract term that rapidly clouds our thinking”.

He also likes this definition since it focuses on practices, and practices “can be directly affected by management while values cannot”. But ‘practices’ isn’t a superficial angle, and involves the change of values and norms, but this happens more indirectly due to factors like cognitive dissonance.

Culture as a description Versus explanation

Hopkins briefly discusses how culture can be used or conceptualised in organisations. For instance, he discusses the idea of a “culture of casual compliance”, indicating a reluctance or indifference to following operational rules and procedures (as was described in the context of the BP Texas City accident).

?Saying that a group has a culture of casual compliance is a descriptive statement. But it can also be used as an explanation for individual non-compliant behaviour. Nevertheless, culture as an explanation “is of limited value, because it offers no insights into the way we might change the culture”.

Further, culture as explanation is “particularly unhelpful when analysts treat culture as the root cause of a problem since this inhibits further inquiry” and can lead to an “inevitable tendency to blame the people concerned, which is almost invariably unhelpful”.

Hence, “In the organisational context, it is usually better to use culture as a description of group behaviour, rather than as an explanation for individual behaviour”.

The Sources of Organisational Culture

Where culture originates from and how it’s shaped is next discussed. Hopkins focuses on two angles: structures and leadership.

For structure, he gives the example of rail, where “The culture of punctuality that exists in many railway systems is an example of how organisational structure creates culture”.

Creating a culture of on-time running requires a vast “organisational apparatus” that ensures on-time running. This includes drivers speeding, use of dashboards and indicators and more. When goals aren’t met, some drivers met performance monitoring and sanctions.

Here, the structures in place created the desired cultures and focus areas for the business, for better or worse.

Next he focuses on the role of leaders in creating cultures. He quotes Ed Schein, who said that “[Leaders create cultures by] what they systematically pay attention to. This can mean anything from what they notice and comment on to what they measure, control, reward and in others ways systematically deal with”.

He says that leaders or structures creating cultures aren’t inconsistent, since if something is important to top leaders then they “will set in place the structures that are necessary to ensure the outcomes they want”.

That is, leaders create the structures that “in turn institutionalise a certain kind of organisational culture”.

Hence, “Organisational cultures depend on the structures that organisations put in place to achieve important outcomes”, and these structures reflect the priorities of top leaders

Culture as emergent or managerialist (created / engineered)

Next Hopkins talks about different and problematic distinctions facing the concept of culture – and that is between how emergent it is versus how engineerable it is (also called the interpretive approach).

From the sociology and anthropology perspectives, culture is generally seen as an emergent group phenomena, where it “emerges from the group in a spontaneous way”.

Another perspective is the managerialist view (also called the functionalist approach), who see culture as a “device that management can use to coerce and control”.

He sees this distinction as problematic since it confuses the nature of culture and its origins. In any case, he argues that if culture is seen as “the way we do things around here”, then it circumvents the discussion of emergence and managerialism; where it originates from, though, “is another matter”.

He says that some aspects of culture emerge spontaneously from the group whereas others have been ‘engineered’.

The Concept of Safety Culture

Off the bat he says “safety culture is a term that has led to endless confusion”.

For some, it represents an environment where “safety is an over-riding priority”. Hence, whether an organisation has a safety culture or not, depends on whether safety is their over-riding priority. He questions whether this is actually the case in most organisations – since safety is probably never the most over-riding priority (creating value and profits, work etc. tend to be the core purpose of most organisations).

Another perspective of safety culture is that it’s more neutral, and that organisations have a more or less desirable safety culture. Thus, “This is just one of the numerous inconsistencies and confusions that surround the term”.

Another source of confusion is between safety culture and safety climate, and how they’re sometimes used interchangeably, which they’re not.

He also ponders whether some of the confusion relates to the English lexicon. He compares safety culture, organisational culture, workplace culture, peer-group culture, aviation culture, and asks which is the odd one out?

While some say aviation, he argues safety culture stands more out of place, as all of the rest relate to a group – work ‘group’, aviation ‘industry’ etc. Here, safety culture relates to no group and is left unspecified.

He says that in French or Spanish, safety culture may instead be said as a “culture of safety”, which has different linguistic implications. A culture of safety, compared to a safety culture, he argues is a culture that emphasises the qualities of safety.

While Hopkins did in the past refer to safety culture – he has shifted over the years to Safety, culture (with the comma), and laments “Today, if I had my way, I would banish “safety culture” from the English language”.

Hence, “The term safety culture is so confusing it should be abandoned”.

Conclusion: If Safety Culture disappears, what next?

Finally, he discusses the premise that if we abandon the term safety culture, what terms could be used instead?

He says there’s several that would be preferable, if any. For one, organisations could focus on the constituent elements or factors that interest them instead of getting caught up in the nebulous and contested concept of safety culture.

If one wanted to emphasise a culture where safety is paramount, then he says “a safe culture, a generative culture (Hudson, Parker,&Lawrie, 2006), or even a culture of safety” could suffice.

Or, one could “also get away completely from the word culture and talk about mindful organisations (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 1999), or operational discipline (Angiullo, 2009), or operational excellence”.

For Hopkins, operational excellence is tempting.

He says that if the perspective is that all organisations have a safety culture, then questions like how good is an organisation’s safety culture can be replaced with “what priority does the organisation give to safety?”

He says that in the above example, safety culture has been “effectively replaced by “safety around here” That is, he believes these sorts of questions replace the idealistic views with the actual.

Author: Hopkins, A. (2018). The Use and Abuse of “Culture”. In C. Gilbert et al. (eds.), Safety Cultures, Safety Models, SpringerBriefs in Safety Management.