Author：Benjamin Brooks
Source：Journal of Safety Research 39 (2008) 73–85
Abstract：
Introduction:
Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) form the majority of Australian businesses.
Method:
This study uses ethnographic research methods（人類學的研究方法） to describe the organizational culture of a small furniture-manufacturing business in southern Australia.
Results:
Results show a range of cultural assumptions variously ‘embedded’ within the enterprise. In line with memetics – Richard Dawkin's cultural application of Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, the author suggests that these assumptions compete to be replicated and retained within the organization. The author suggests that dominant assumptions are naturally selected, and that the selection can be better understood by considering the cultural assumptions in reference to Darwin
The results are discussed with reference to safety systems, negative cultural elements called Cultural Safety Viruses, and how our understanding of this particular organizational culture might be used to build resistance to these viruses.
個人感想：
這篇質型研究，看題目就知道很另類、宏觀與發人深省（連人類學家都跨行來研究工安，工安真的如此有搞頭嗎？）
一些想藉量性研究方法找出改善中小企業安全績效的專家，或許應該先看看人家泡在田野當中的寶貴洞見
以下用摘錄（=斷章取義）的方式呈現一些重點
1. Introduction
The organizational culture is presented in terms of a group of ‘assumptions’ – underlying cultural phenomena. However a group of cultural assumptions is only partially useful to the safety scientist. For the scientist to be able to use this information, they should understand how cultural assumptions are dispersed and replicated in the organization. This study combines frameworks derived from a cultural application of the theory of evolution by natural selection (called ‘memetics;’ Dawkins, 1989), and an anthropological theory of knowledge (Barth, 2002), to understand the dispersal and replication of cultural assumptions
1.1. Industry Background and Injury Data
SMEs should be considered a pillar of the Australian commercial economy. They account for approximately 97% of all Australian enterprises and employ approximately 3.5 million or almost 50% of Australian workers. Workplace-related injuries in SMEs constitute a significant burden every year. During the 1995–96 financial year, workplace injury was calculated to cost these organizations $AUS 8.3 billion.
1.2. Description of Work Processes & History
An analysis of available worker's compensation statistics for 1999, 2001, and 2002 (2000, 2003 records were not available) for this SME demonstrates an average of four claims per year, none of which resulted in greater than 10 days absence from work. The 12 claims in total for the three years included seven relating to being hit/cut by a machine, two over-exersions from the manual handling of a load, and two hit/cut by a hand-tool.
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates (LTIFR) were not available. Average incidence statistics for wood industry workers as calculated by Larsson and Field (2000) were 30 per 1,000 workers annually, compared to an average incidence of 8 per 1,000 workers annually for all occupations. However, this includes only those claims that generated an above the excess lost time (N10 days) or a medical cost above the excess. From a group of 20 workers, this organization should sustain 0.6 of this magnitude of injuries per year.
1.3. Organizational Culture
1.4. Anthropological Reflections on Culture（這個部分我真的是外行、嚴重缺乏人類學的理論架構背景知識）
In Social Action Theory, social structure is fluid and porous, emphasis is directed toward the individual as self-interested manipulator and entrepreneur whose actions continually modify the normative and institutional framework of society.
1.5. Safety Culture
Safety climate dimensions as including:
• Management commitment to safety
• Rank and status of safety officers — Frequency of contact and communication between workers and management, and frequency of inspections
• Level of general environmental control and housekeeping, use of safety devices
• Stability of workforce, turnover, average age of workers
• Safety promotion method (Zohar, 1980 p.97)
…..另外許多不同學者列出一大堆安全文化與氣候的不同構面（也造成小弟對此一研究方向沒有興趣…）
另外一些學者把安全文化與氣候的成熟度，區分成以下五個等級：
• Pathological: information is hidden, responsibilities avoided, failures covered up.
• Reactive: an organization that deals with OHS problems and accidents as they arise.
• Bureaucratic: information may be ignored, responsibilities are compartmentalized, the organization addresses the results of failure
• Proactive: attempt to anticipate safety problems before they occur, but do not use safety as a cultural focus to the extent that generative cultures do
• Generative: information is actively sought, responsibilities are shared, failure causes inquiry into causes (Westrum, 1996).
1.6. Memetics（Natural Selection）
This ritual can link with values or patterns of behavior that might significantly affect the safety culture of an organization. This leads to another issue, Dawkins described as ‘viruses of the mind’
The use of the term ‘virus’ recalls Reason's ‘resident pathogen metaphor’ (Reason, 1993). In the metaphor it was suggested that “latent failures in technical systems are analogous to resident pathogens in the human body, which combine with local triggering factors (e.g., life stresses or toxic chemicals) to overcome the immune systems and produce disease” (Reason, 1993 p.9). Cultural Safety Viruses might also be resident in the organization, most commonly in people's minds, but also as actions and artifacts throughout the workplace. Similar to ‘triggering factors,’ these memeplexes need suitable replicating environments, most likely social relations between particular individuals or groups, using certain types of media, but also potential or actual deviations in work practices.
2. Method
During the initial period of fieldwork an ethnographic assessment of the organizational culture was conducted. Over this time informal open-ended interviews were conducted with employers and employees on a daily basis. The researcher spent 8–10 hours a day, 5 days a week onsite for a total of approximately 500 hours contact. A journal of written notes was maintained throughout the day and after the shift. Workers compensation records for the previous 3 years and any documents associated with the safety management system were provided to the researcher for analysis.
為什麼我泡這個領域當中超過十年，與現場各階層人員喇低賽超過上千小時，卻沒有取得同樣的洞見、sense-making與insight？
3. Results
3.1. Organizational Culture
以下作者的整理，很清楚的描繪出中小企業的文化和老闆的心智模式，也讓人看見勞資雙方心態的落差
1. “A dollar's value!” – The core mission of the business is to make money for the employers. It is also a challenge, a ‘game’ (that they play to test their business acumen), and a focus for the family. However there is strong opposition to spending money that doesn’t obviously make money – this is very much a production-driven perspective.
2. “What price quality?” – It is better to buy furniture of a higher quality because it will last longer and over time actually save you money. This SME manufactures this type of furniture although the distinction between it and the ‘cheaper’ imported furniture is becoming less obvious to the consumer. This is an assumption about the ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ of the organization intertwined with an assumption about the means used to achieve the mission of the organization. This assumption has been a mainstay of the organization for many years, but now appears under pressure as the company diversifies in difficult times.
3. “The powerful and the powerless.” – All significant, and the vast majority of minor business and operational decisions are made by the employers – there is extremely limited devolvement of power to employees.
4. “Upstairs and downstairs and somewhere in the middle” –Over a period of 7 years (since the third generation of the family took control of the business) a “them vs us” mentality has slowly driven a greater divide between employers and some employees. With the emergence of new business strategies (e.g., kitchen fit-outs) contractors have begun working in the factory. This has blurred the strict boundaries between employer and employee.
5. “Perform or perish.” – Each employee's job is only as safe as their ability to perform their duties in an efficient and effective manner, and is reliant on there being enough work for them to do. People do get retrenched from time to time. Administrative personnel are not employed directly by this SME, but by a labor-hire company and can be released by the company at any time. Some employees’ security is challenged every time a new container of imported furniture is unloaded (particularly in the machine shop and cabinet shop). This assumption provides a perspective on human activity within the organization. The role of the employee is to meet the continuing and changing needs of the employer by filling niches as they arise.
6. “How to predict the future? Create it!” – With furniture manufacturing and retailing currently in such a difficult and unpredictable environment, innovation and movement into importing, retailing, and niche markets has been defined by the employers as the way to survive and grow. This relates to the ‘doing’ orientation focusing on the task, on efficiency, and on discovery (Schein 1992, p.128). This assumption also means that the flexible employee prepared to learn new skills is most likely to survive and prosper. The majority of employees have embraced this assumption, with a small minority clinging to the previous perspective on uncertainty during which furniture manufacturing was a safe business, their roles were fixed, and the only hazards to the viability of the business were fires and floods.
7. “Communication as a weapon” – Supply of information and communication is a key strategy used to reward and punish by both employees and the employers.
8. “My time is not your time” – For the employers, time is polychronic – they must manage daily production with monthly cashflows and have one eye on the future as the industry changes rapidly. They work 60–70 hour weeks. For employees, they arrive at the same time, account for every minute of their working day, leave when the bell rings, and work a 38 hour week. In larger companies the time differences are less obvious because of the hierarchy. Owners and employers have managers and supervisors, and each level's temporal assumptions are slightly more similar to the one below. At this SME, temporal differences come hard up against each other.
9. “We’ll do the thinking, you make the furniture” – Action is a main emphasis during the day. It is not employee's role to stop and think – if they are unsure, they should ask the employer and a decision will be made. The employers (father and son) regularly take opportunities to debate issues (both short and long term) using impromptu conferences. This assumption references the appropriate method of human activity in the organization. The employer's role is to guide a family heirloom over time. The interaction is democratic amongst the owners, yet autocratic in response to employees. In terms of the degree of participation, employees either consider themselves to be in a coersive system (they would leave if possible) or a utilitarian system (economic rationalism of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay).
10. “Are you part of the family?” – The owners support a family oriented environment where employees that support the other assumptions become more a part of the family than others, and less affected by the “we’ll do the thinking…” assumption. This involves a transition from emotionally neutral and specific relationships to more emotionally charged and diffuse relationships. As Schein notes, “one of the most salient features of family firms is that certain levels of intimacy and trust appear to be reserved for family members, creating a kind of dual intimacy system in the organization” (Schein, 1992 p. 82).
11. “Too much space?” – In a factory that previously supported four times the number of employees, the large amount of space and the dispersal of employees through the different ‘shops’ can promote separation and isolation, yet also allows people to not be distracted and to ‘own’ a significant work space within the factory. It is a significant component in a general perception of decline in the organization's well-being.
4. Discussion
就放一張表，來呈現以上組織文化與老闆心智，和建立安全文化/氣候時所會遭遇到的衝突和對立（看這張表讓人很有fu，可以自我安慰這些年沒有白混）
這篇文章其實打了那些搞安全文化/氣候學者很大的一個巴掌=>
因為意味著沒有良好的組織文化背景脈洛，根本不用想建立安全文化與氣候
能夠跳脫成本導向、具備格局的公司，就會再進一步成長，吸引到更多優秀&願意開放、溝通的人才，進一步改變公司的文化
安全文化只是公司文化的果
企業文化才是安全績效的真因
拿安全文化與氣候來預測安全績效，其實錯把相關性詮釋成為因果關係！
以人類學”病毒與基因的角度來說”
只看眼前短期可見利益、忽視不可見的風險與長期潛在成本的態度和觀念，就是對於安全文化和氣候最具殺傷力的病毒基因
或許這也就同樣是這些中小企業無法長大的基因限制
雖然看不懂人類學的研究方法和理論，但是感覺見學與分享到作者的一些高見，令人喜悅。
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