Research of security and safety culture within an organization. The case study within the Slovak Republic

• Published in: Security journal Vol. 35; no. 2; pp. 571 - 599
• Main Authors: Veľas, Andrej, Halaj, Martin, Hofreiter, Ladislav, Kampová, Katarína, Zvaková, Zuzana, Jankura, Richard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Palgrave Macmillan UK 01-06-2022; Palgrave Macmillan
• Subjects: Corporate culture; Crime and Society; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Data collection; Employees; Evaluation; Indicators; Organizations; Original Article; Research methods; Safety; Safety factors; Safety training; Security; Social Sciences; Slovakia; Organization; Safety; Security; Culture; Factors
• ISSN: 0955-1662; 1743-4645
• DOI: 10.1057/s41284-021-00291-5

Security and safety culture is an increasingly important term in assessing the security and safety of organizations. It is an internal security and safety factor of an organization that can directly influence its overall security and safety. In many cases, however, organizations do not know, nor do they have a way of assessing the level of their security and safety culture. It is therefore necessary to know the content, elements, and sectors in which it can be identified in order to gain a deeper knowledge of security and safety culture in more detail and be able to examine it. Firstly, we focused on creating a model for evaluating the safety and safety culture and its application in selected organizations. Secondly, we devoted to the description and design of an organization’s security and safety culture assessment model. The proposed model is based on the identification of subsectors and indicators of security and safety culture that will gain their value by using information obtained from combining the four proposed methods. Accordingly, six security and safety culture sectors were defined for the purposes of security and safety culture assessment in selected organizations. These were compared to each other to determine their mutual weight. Finally, using these research methods, security and safety culture indicators were also identified and included in the defined security and safety culture sectors. The research needed to design a security and safety culture assessment model was realized in six selected organizations, which wanted to participate in the research. These were divided according to the size of the organization into two small, two medium, and two large organizations. Crucial element in our research was data collection conducted by means of controlled interviews and questionnaire surveys in these organizations. Based on this survey, indicators of security and safety culture could be identified. As a result of this, security and safety culture values are determined for all analyzed organizations. The conclusions will point up the possible way of evaluating security and safety culture in organizations and it also contains a specific example of their usage in the practice. Thus, by using the resulting values, it is possible to decide the further direction for the organizations, focusing on the sectors of the security and safety culture, which yielded unsatisfactory results.