Although the concept of safety culture was coined in relation to major accidents like Chernobyl
and Piper Alpha, it has been embraced by the safety community at large as a cause
for unsafe practice. In this article, three approaches to safety culture are discussed in terms
of their underlying concepts of culture and organizational culture. Culture is an intangible,
fuzzy concept encompassing acquired assumptions that is shared among the members of a
group and that provides meaning to their perceptions and actions and those of others. The
basic assumptions that form the essence of a culture are shared, yet tacit, convictions, which
manifest themselves subtly in the visible world. As applied by safety researchers, the culture
concept is deprived of much of its depth and subtlety, and is morphed into a grab bag of
behavioral and other visible characteristics, without reference to the meaning these characteristics
might actually have, and often infused with normative overtones. By combining the
three approaches, we can resurrect the notion of safety culture and strengthen its analytical
potential in understanding the development and implementation of safety management
systems.