The role of safety culture and safety leadership on safety-related outcomes

Following the progress in high-risk industries, workplace safety has gained great attention not only academically but also publicly. Safety culture and safety leadership have been recognized as key factors driving this progress. A number of organizations have adopted safety culture assessments in their safety management systems in order to evaluate the state of safety, as well as to identify the weaknesses and strengths regarding their safety culture. Organizations also train their leaders to have a positive impact on safety. Pioneer work on safety culture was conducted in hazardous industries such as aviation, manufacturing, military and nuclear power. Later, despite the discrepancies between the industry and the healthcare sector, the medical domain also followed suite and adopted various approaches towards safety culture and safety leadership. Theoretical developments emphasize organizational and leader commitment to safety as one of the key facets of safety culture, which illustrates the close connection between the concepts of safety culture and safety leadership. This chapter focuses on safety culture and safety leadership, and how they relate to a number of different safety outcomes in various work settings.