Damage, measurement and control of cultural resistance

The review of numerous Australian and International Transport and Health Safety cases has highlighted the detrimental effect of cultural resistance when engineers and regulators seek to improve transport safety.

This paper will define culture and cultural resistance.   It will review a number of cases and provide an overview of the effect of cultural resistance, demonstrating some common characteristics of these cases.

A limited number of risk management disciplines will be reviewed as they apply to the problem, and highlight the value of expertise in these fields as an advantage to the engineer and regulator.

Potential research direction will be identified with specific relevance to transport safety initiatives in Australia.

This paper is an extract of a full research paper “Making the Kingfisher Archipelago a Safer Place”, Smith, D.B., 2005, available from the author upon request.