Investigating a homogeneous culture for operating personnel working in domestic nuclear power plants

Abstract

It is evident that a cultural difference (or variability) is one of the determinants affecting the performance of human operators. This means that, from the point of human reliability analysis (HRA), the effect of the cultural variability on the performance of human operators should be carefully scrutinized. In this regard, the cultural profile of operating personnel working in two domestic nuclear power plants (NPPs) were collected and compared based on the Hofstede's 11 cultural dimensions. However, as the coverage of this comparison is not sufficient to manifest the existence of a homogenous culture, cultural data were additionally collected from 52 operating personnel working in domestic NPPs, of which the working environments were distinctive from those of previous NPPs. As a result, it was observed that the cultural profiles of operating personnel working in different NPPs closely resemble each other except in a few cultural dimensions. This result suggests that, operating personnel at least working in domestic NPPs, largely share a homogeneous culture. Accordingly, although more extensive analyses are required to validate the results of this study, it is promising that the cultural variability of operating personnel could be soundly characterized if they share a homogeneous culture.