Aim: Broadly, safety culture can be considered as ‘the way we do things around here’ with respect to health and safety (Vu & De Cieri, 2014). Underpinning this simplistic definition are layers that represent the different components of safety culture. According to Schein (2010), organisational culture consists of artefacts (observable manifestations of the culture such as machine operating behaviours), values (what is considered important or prioritised), and fundamental beliefs/assumptions. The amorphous nature of safety culture makes it especially difficult to find consistent evidence surrounding its measurement and improvement (Griffin & Curcuruto, 2017). At its core, safety culture consists of beliefs that are largely considered to exist at a subconscious level (Guldenmund, 2000), which makes it difficult to operationalise and measure in a consistent manner. Accordingly, safety culture cannot be measured with a safety climate survey alone (Glendon & Stanton, 2000; Guldenmund, 2000, 2007). A mixed-methods approach that uses qualitative methods must be employed to capture evidence of shared beliefs. The aim of this study is to discover and measure the prevalence of beliefs surrounding work health and safety, with a view to developing an intervention toolkit suitable for the NSW manufacturing industry.

Design: A cross-sectional design will be used for this study.

Method: In line with best practice around cultural measurement and change, a mixed-methods and participatory approach will be used. Specifically, a qualitative design phase will uncover specific logics and beliefs around safety culture, with these being incorporated into a quantitative survey designed to measure the prevalence of such beliefs across a cohort of 60 manufacturing organisations.

Results: Our study is scheduled to commence in early February, with the results to be made available by April 2019.

Conclusion: Existing safety culture measurement activities are constrained by an often exclusive use of quantitative surveys. Further, safety culture change initiatives typically adopt a superficial approach that targets employee behaviour rather than ‘digging deeper’ to explore the role played by beliefs or logics in shaping workers’ thinking and actions in safety-critical settings.

Aim: Measures of work safety climate are frequently employed to assess the risk of injury or accidents within an organisation. As a leading indicator, work safety climate is considered a more effective indicator of risk compared to indicators based on retrospective data. Recent research indicates that over 200 safety climate measures are publically available for use (Vu & De Cieri, 2015). Of these, the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50) has consistently demonstrated strong reliability and validity, applicability across a variety of sectors and job groups, and international usefulness – being currently available in 23 languages. A frequently reported issue with comprehensive measures of this kind, however, is the time it takes to complete, which limits its use, particularly for regular monitoring purposes. Sustaining a good work safety climate over time requires effective monitoring measures that can identify potential safety concerns before they become critical. A problem with long and comprehensive measures is that they are often only employed in a time of crisis.

The aim of this study was therefore to examine the extent to which it is possible to produce a shorter version of this safety climate measure that is reliable, valid, and practically useful. In collaboration with safety climate researchers, a 23-item measure was developed. The reduced measure retains a 7-dimension structure of the NOSACQ and contains questions that target both the management and co-worker levels of safety climate. Recent findings suggest that the effect of co-workers on safety climate may vary depending on the structure of an organisation. By utilising both management and co-worker dimensions, this reduced measure has potential applicability for diagnostic and monitoring use across a range of industries and organisational structures.

Method: The 23-items of the brief version were selected based on several criteria. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using SPSS provided the foundation. The dataset contained 300 disability support workers and 100 hospitality employees. Using the reliability function in SPSS Cronbach’s alpha scores were determined for each dimension. This also provided a measure of internal consistency for each item if the item was removed. Additionally, a panel of safety climate researchers individually selected the questions they deemed most important. Readability of each item was also considered, using Flesch reading ease scores and Flesch-Kincaid grade levels. The effects of positively and negatively worded questions were examined but found to have no impact on results.

Results: Using DSW and hospitality employee data a factor analysis was performed on the reduced 23-item measure. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was .95, well above the commonly recommended value of .6, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p< .001). As with the original measure, all items significantly correlated with one another (p range = <.001 - .041). Finally, the communalities were all above .5, confirming that each item shared common variance with other items.

When comparing the reliability of the reduced measure with the original 50-item measure, Cronbach’s Alpha scores for each of the 7-dimensions were smaller compared with the 50-item measure, but all dimensions except for one scored within or above what is deemed acceptable (0.65-0.8). Future studies will examine the dimension that did not reach an acceptable score of reliability.

The 23-item measure (using both DSW and combined DSW and hospitality data) strongly and significantly (p< .001) correlated with three dependent measures of stress: personal, work-related, and client-related, and correlated moderately and significantly with two measures of mental and physical health (p< .001, p= .007, respectively). Although there was no direct estimate of the time taken to complete the brief version, assuming similar times to complete the items would reduce the overall time taken to complete the measure by over 50%.

Conclusion: Preliminary analyses support the reduced measure. Factor loadings increased from disability support workers (DSWs) when compared to the original 50-item measure, and these loadings further increased when combined with hospitality employees. The reduced measure correlated highly with measures of personal, work-related, and client-related stress, and moderately with a general measure of physical and mental health. Future research will include assessing the measure in a wider variety of organisations. Qualitative questions will also be included in a final version of the measure to improve the diagnostic usefulness through context and industry/item-specific feedback. An advantage of basing a brief version on a more comprehensive measure is that parts of the latter could be used to provide a more detailed diagnosis of specific safety issues identified by the brief version. While development of the brief version has been based only on data from disability support workers and hospitality employees, future research is planned using data from a variety of organisations, and with different kinds of organisational structures, to test the reliability, validity and practical usefulness of the measure.

Issue: In a highly competitive global marketplace, the pursuit of innovation and creativity are at the top of the agenda for companies seeking to differentiate themselves and succeed. But how do companies actually become innovative? Research has shown that organisational culture can foster innovation, or hinder it. This case study explores the factors that develop and support innovation in organisational culture.

Approach: This case study used a qualitative research design with semi-structured interviews to study a model of best practice with regards to innovation and organisational culture. The sample of participants in this case study were employees of an Australian-based technology company. The company was selected based on its inclusion in the Australian Financial Review newspaper’s list of 100 Most Innovative Companies in Australia. A thorough review of existing research into the topic of creativity and innovation in organisations identified specific factors that appeared to play a role in developing and supporting innovation at work. These factors formed the basis for a number of a priori themes for which interview questions were then developed.

Key Findings: The study found that the presence of innovation in the case study organisation was facilitated by a complex interaction of factors that worked to create intrinsically motivated employees in an environment that is safe and supportive for trying new things in the pursuit of innovation. Eight themes emerged as being important to facilitating innovation in the case study organisation. Their role in organisational culture is discussed. These themes are: Leadership (valuing creativity, supporting creativity and role modelling creativity); Risk Tolerance (acceptance of failure, creating an environment where it is safe to think outside the box, try new things and fail); Autonomy (essential for the opportunity to engage in creative behaviour and intrinsic motivation); Intrinsic Motivation (demonstrated by the willingness to go ‘over and above’ in work, a dedication to the pursuit of excellence and being driven by a strong purpose); Organisational Identification (sense of belonging and identification with the case study organisation); Group Cohesion (positive attitudes of acceptance towards colleagues); Openness (to new ideas and new ways of working); and Agility (the ability to adapt, made possible by the open, informal, agile nature of the working environment, where processes are minimal).

Implications: For organisations to become more innovative, they must use organisational culture to create the right conditions for innovation to thrive. The first of these conditions is to ensure that leaders in the organisation value creativity. This means having leaders that are open to new ideas and new ways of working. Leaders also need to be accepting of failure and tolerant of elevated levels of risk arising from the organisation trying new things that may not work. Creativity is born of trying and failing until you find something that works, and organisations need to ensure employees have a safe place to that without it adversely impact their performance review. The second condition is to develop employees that are intrinsically motivated. Research has shown that employees that demonstrate more creativity at work are motivated not by a pay check, but by work that is meaningful and challenging. Organisations can encourage intrinsic motivation by ensuring employees are given autonomy in their work. Purpose is also important to the development of intrinsic motivation, which means sharing bigger picture strategic direction and providing visibility of work in other departments across the organisation. Organisations that successfully create both these conditions need to excel in communication. Communication is how leaders show employees they value creativity, are open to new ideas and willing to accept failure. Communication is how employees know they are trusted to work autonomously and purposefully within the broader organisational effort. In this way, communication is the enabler of creativity.

Conclusion: This case study shows that it is possible to intentionally develop an organisational culture of innovation by implementing specific factors on both a leadership and employee level. If organisations are able to encourage these factors and make them part of the organisation’s beliefs, values, priorities and unique way of working, they will likely be able to develop a culture of innovation in their organisation that will have a long-lasting impact on organisational performance.

Background: In early 2017, the University of Adelaide embarked upon major infrastructure developments, most notably, the new Adelaide Health and Medical Sciences (AHMS) building. The environment for research-intensive universities is increasingly challenging, and the new AHMS building was designed to place medical sciences, including medicine, nursing and dentistry, and their associated academics and students in the same building with facilities that will support researchers to maximise their competitiveness and productivity, nationally and internationally. In the current field of medical research, it has been argued that the phenomena under investigation are often so complex that traditional single discipline research is unlikely to make further significant progress within the confines of the traditional strict disciplinary boundaries and frameworks (Calhoun & Marrett, 2003; Cheng, Henisz, Roth and Swaminathan, 2009).

As a result, this has given rise to the emergence of interdisciplinary research teams, where researchers across different academic fields work together to advance the existing knowledge and understanding of complex medical challenges (Goodman & Blake, 2006; National Research Council, 2015). Interdisciplinary research is often viewed as a desirable way of integrating knowledge from different disciplines to develop innovative and novel solutions to complex problems (NIH News, 2007). While these teams are considered to be crucial, and may be the foundation for success in contemporary medical research, appropriate strategies to manage, maximise and sustain team effectiveness need to be developed and implemented based on an understanding of critical factors.

Aims: Interdisciplinary teams have become of significant importance in recent years. The present literature suggests that it is essential to develop and implement appropriate strategies to manage, maximize and sustain team effectiveness. Accordingly, having effective teams is not only about understanding how to get these teams to initiate work that will achieve publications and grants but also understanding how team members work satisfactorily together to enable them to sustain productive relationships in the team. The present study aims to investigate some of the critical factors affecting managing interdisciplinary research teams over time. In particular, it investigated the impact of a team climate for innovation and a motivational team climate on job satisfaction within interdisciplinary medical research teams by evaluating the extent to which the Team Climate Inventory (TCI) and Motivational Climate at Work Questionnaire (MCWQ) can be used to provide potentially useful information about job satisfaction in these types of research teams.

Method: Survey data from 109 online self-report questionnaires were obtained from Honours and postgraduate students, and academic and other staff members who identified themselves as working in an interdisciplinary medical research team in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Adelaide. The survey consisted of questions relating to demographic information, participants’ perceptions concerning communications within teams and team success, items from the TCI and MCWQ, as well as job satisfaction. The job satisfaction scale developed by Neuberger and Allerbeck (1978) was used to measure job satisfaction as it has previously been used within university research teams (e.g. Braun, Peus, Weisweiler & Frey, 2013) thus indicating its suitability for use in a similar participant group. Qualitative data was captured through open-ended questions to provide further explanations and elaborations to quantitative questions.

Results: The primary purpose of this study was to investigate team climate within interdisciplinary medical research teams and its effect on job satisfaction. Consistent with previous findings, high scores in the TCI were associated with greater job satisfaction (e.g. Goni, 1999; Proudfoot et al., 2007). Furthermore, with respect to the MCWQ the existing literature has suggested that teams who have a higher focus on a mastery-oriented climate are more likely to enjoy being part of the team in a sports setting (Walling, Duda & Chi, 1993). Likewise, the present results found that strong emphasis on a mastery-oriented climate as measured by the MCWQ was associated with higher job satisfaction. Previous findings have suggested that a high-performance climate was associated with poor work performance, and performance anxiety (Abrahamsen, Roberts & Pensagaard, 2008; Nerstad et al, 2013; Ntroumanis & Biddle, 1999). Although there has not been any research on this measure in regards to job satisfaction, it was anticipated from these previous results that a high performance climate, as measured by MCWQ, would have a negative association with job satisfaction, but this was not the case. Performance climate did not significantly correlate with job satisfaction nor with any of the other variables in the present study.

Conclusion: The majority of participants in this study were postgraduate students (62%), which suggests the research results may not be generalized to interdisciplinary teams with different combinations of students, academics and administrative staff. However, results from this research suggest that the TCI and MCWQ are valid measures that could be used to monitor critical aspects of team climate over time and identify issues important for sustaining or improving those aspects of team climate and associated job satisfaction.