A growing number of studies have been conducted to define and assess safety culture in a variety of complex, high-risk, industries. The purpose of the present study was to review these efforts in order to gain a better understanding of the “safety culture” concept, along with the highly related concept of “safety climate.” Results suggest that there exists considerable disagreement among researchers as to how safety culture should be defined and whether or not safety culture is inherently different from the concept of safety climate. These differences, however, are not generally due to the uniqueness of the industry or work domain being studied, since many researchers have focused on common domains (e.g., nuclear power). A synthesis of these various perspectives was conducted and hybrid definitions of both safety culture and climate are provided. Perhaps a common nomenclature and set of definitions will enable researchers to better share information and strategies for improving safety culture.
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