Rolling up our sleeves and pulling up our socks: A critical review of safety culture definitions and measures, and innovative ways to move the field forward

No other concept in safety science is as studied, yet poorly understood (or measured) as safety culture. In this chapter, we aim to bring conceptual and methodological clarity to this field. Our proposition is that to effectively measure safety culture, one must firstly clearly define it, and align the research design and method with the definition. Drawing on recent theoretical development in organizational culture and safety science, we critically review safety culture research published in the past two decades. We then present an argument to encourage researchers to adopt closer definitional-methodological alignment. A safety culture ‘manifesto’ is also shown, which we hope will guide future research on safety culture by advancing commitments that researchers can uphold. Finally, we look towards the future and summarize emerging measurement methods from the organizational culture literature to explore how technology and innovative tools and techniques can be used to take the safety culture field forward.