The influence of culture on safety of products, systems and processes: A systems perspective

Safety is a largely human focused emergent property since it is concerned with freedom from unacceptable level of harm to people exposed to the hazards of a product, system or process. The unrelenting pace of innovations and increasing complexity of technology renders the relationship between safety and social factors even more intricate and more fundamental to our understanding of the root causes of incidents and accidents. However, there´s rarity of research about social factors´ influence on safety, or how to ensure the safety of products, systems & processes/services in different cultural settings. The current research defines culture as a collective emergence from a human group or society, which can influence the design, operation and sustainability of the safe performance of products, systems and processes/services. In this endeavour, our experience in the railway industry in both European and Chinese context is exploited to demonstrate the principles and the foundations of the systems approach to this important moral and legal concern.