Modelling and assessing the influence of organizational culture norms on safety culture using Bayesian networks approach: the case of an oil industry

The current study aimed at investigating the influence of organizational culture on safety culture in an oil industry. The data relating to organizational culture were gathered by the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI). To this end, a valid questionnaire was used to gather the data associated to safety culture. The questionnaires were randomly distributed among 409 employees working in 13 units of an oil industry. In total, 380 valid completed questionnaires were gathered. Probabilistic Bayesian Networks have been employed to determine the influence of organizational culture on safety culture in a quantitative form. The resultant model output could establish the probabilistic relationship between 12 norms (OCI1 to OCI12) of the organizational culture and safety culture. Furthermore, the OCIs with a direct influence and the ones with the greatest influences on safety culture were also identified. In this line, the findings showed that OCI11 (achievement), OCI4 (conventional), OCI7 (oppositional), and OCI8 (power) were the most important variables that directly influenced safety culture, while OCI6 was revealed to have an indirect influence on safety culture. Therefore, the findings of this study can be benefited from to improve and reinforce safety culture in the plant under study.