Résumés
Abstract
This study contributes to the emerging literature on the interplay between safety committees and employee perceptions of organizational safety culture. Creating, managing and maintaining a safety culture in organizations involves significant investment in the establishment of safety committees. The role of such committees in improving safety culture perceptions has remained underexplored in the safety management and organizational literature.
This study addresses that gap and focuses on a safety committee within the facilities management operations of a large American academic institution. The objective is to generate understandings of how a committee can influence organizational cultural change and impact employee perceptions of safety.
Using Schein’s organizational culture model as a prism, we unpack the employees’ implicit cultural beliefs. Data from over sixty employee interviews revealed that formation of the Safety Committee resulted in unintended consequences in terms of employee perceptions.
Employees attributed most safety-related actions to the committee when, in fact, the managers and supervisors had actually carried them out. This overestimation of committee activities and concomitant underestimation of managerial actions by employees was an unintended consequence of establishing a committee. Employees, in fact, collectively attributed all positive changes in the organizational culture to the committee. The committee ultimately influenced the employees’ basic assumptions, such change being, according to Schein, a prerequisite for organizational cultural change.
This study, therefore, contributes to the literature by proposing that unintended consequences can operate in three different ways to support organizational change. First, unintended consequences can promote positive outcomes; second, they can reveal a new understanding of committees, which under certain circumstances can act as a proxy for management and encourage positive perceptions of managerial commitment. Lastly, unintended consequences can provide a means to detect and ‘excavate’ hidden, implicit assumptions that drive organizational culture’s deepest layers.
Keywords:
- safety culture,
- committees,
- unintended consequences,
- organizational culture,
- facilities management,
- Schein’s model
Résumé
Cette étude contribue à la littérature émergente sur l’interaction entre les comités de sécurité et la culture de sécurité organisationnelle. La création, la gestion et la maintenance d’une culture de sécurité dans une organisation requièrent un investissement significatif de ressources, notamment pour la création d’un comité de sécurité. L’impact de celui-ci dans l’amélioration des perceptions sur la sécurité est resté jusqu’alors relativement sous-étudié dans la littérature.
Cette étude s’intéresse à cette problématique et examine le rôle d’un comité de sécurité dans le département des opérations d’une grande université américaine. Notre objet est d’ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives quant à l’influence et l’impact de ces comités sur les perceptions des collaborateurs dans un processus global de changement de culture organisationnelle.
En déployant le modèle de culture organisationnel de Schein, nous avons sondé les croyances implicites d’une soixantaine de salariés interviewés. Les données recueillies ont révélé que l’allocation de temps et de ressources dans le comité ont créé une perception positive sur l’engagement managérial vis-à-vis de la sécurité. Les employés ont, ainsi, attribué au comité la majorité des actions relatives à la sécurité, alors qu’en réalité les initiatives concernées ont été portées par les managers et superviseurs travaillant directement sur le terrain. Une telle surestimation de l’activité du comité et sous-estimation concomitante de l’activité par les managers directs est une conséquence inattendue de la création du comité de sécurité. En effet, les employés ont collectivement attribué tout changement positif au comité.
Ceci a permis à celui-ci d’exercer une influence sur les postulats fondamentaux des employés; un prérequis, selon Schein, pour réaliser un changement de culture organisationnelle. Cette étude contribue donc à la littérature en avançant la notion que les conséquences inattendues peuvent fonctionner de trois manières différentes pour soutenir le changement organisationnel. Premièrement, elles peuvent promouvoir des résultats positifs; deuxièmement, elles peuvent révéler le pouvoir légitimant d’une ‘main invisible’ managériale; et, troisièmement, elles peuvent servir d’outil pour détecter et déterrer les postulats de base de la culture organisationnelle.
Mots-clés:
- culture de sécurité,
- comités,
- conséquences inattendues,
- culture organisationnelle,
- gestion des installations,
- modèle de Schein
Parties annexes
Parties annexes
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