Cultural backgrounds of employees' safety behaviors: Coding and cluster analysis on participant observation

Safety culture is a social control power in hazardous industrial systems. This study aims to explore the characteristics of safety culture in China. The 128 behavior incidents of employees' routine work were gained through 103 days' participant observation in a state owned petrochemical plant. Cluster analysis was conducted on the selected 109 incidents, and finally assembling them into 4 categories according to five conceptual bipolar variables. Results indicated that: (1) Stern management is not able to control employees' safety behaviors; (2) Employees usually behave conforming to the norm formed by the working group and judge things according to the situation; (3) Employees' abidance of rules depends on different conditions; and (4) Authority's power is also a factor to safety behaviors. Although it works in certain tense, it cannot bring effective influence to the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of employees.