A New Perspective on Safety Management - Safety Communication for Safety Culture in the Swedish Pulp- and Paper Industry

Safety management is a central management activity in high-risk industries. We propose a new way of thinking about safety management by exploring the role of safety communication for safety culture, as opposed to understanding safety communication merely as an artifact of safety culture. Applying an in-depth qualitative interview study approach with 39 participants from a Swedish pulp- and paper mill, the study identifies enabling and hindering factors of safety communication for safety culture. Enabling factors include leadership commitment, employee engagement and involvement, knowledge sharing, psychosocial wellbeing, and effective reporting and risk management. Hindering factors involve organizational fragmentation, neglect of psychosocial aspects, lack of mentoring and training, dysfunctional reporting systems, and a culture of silence regarding safety. Theoretically, the study contributes with shedding light on the role of safety communication for shaping and aligning safety culture dimensions and processes throughout an organization via targeted, engaging and holistic safety management. Further, we advance theory by observing a greater role of psychosocial aspects in safety communication than previously recognized. Practical implications manifest in the need to incorporate psychosocial aspects in safety management as well as actively leveraging the aligning power of safety communication. Further research can depart from this study and can further deepen our understanding of mechanisms through which safety communication influences safety culture. Managers, policy makers and practitioners are equipped with insights on how to strengthen enabling factors and improve hindering factors to foster safety culture via safety communication.

Keywords: Workplace safety, occupational safety, safety management, safety culture, safety communication, pulp industry, paper industry, forest industry.