Counteracting the cultural causes of disaster

It is widely recognised that disasters are preceded by warning signs which are ignored or discounted because of cultural factors. There is now considerable discussion of the possibility of constructing safety cultures to counteract this effect. This paper contributes to this discussion by drawing on the case of a coal mine disaster in Australia. The paper shows that there were two sets of cultural factors at work preventing appropriate responses to warning signs. The first was a hierarchy of knowledge which placed greatest value on personal experience and systematically discounted the reports of others. The second was a culture of denial, an elaborate set of beliefs which held that 'it couldn't happen here'. The paper shows that the response of the authorities has been to mandate specific hazard management systems which force companies to attend to warnings. The paper concludes that only an understanding of safety culture which includes an organisational dimension provides an adequate way of conceptualising these developments.