Perception of safety culture in the Nepalese aviation industry: A factor analysis approach

Abstract

This paper uses industry-wide survey data to assess employees’ perception of safety culture in the Nepalese aviation industry. A factor analysis with Principal Component Analysis extraction and varimax rotation is employed to extract factors from the data set of thirty-three variables. The initial factor solution identifies “Positive safety practices”, “Management and decision making”, “Safety management systems”, and “Implementation of policies and procedures” as the factors influencing the perception of safety in an organization. Likewise, respondents considered “Implementation of safety policies and procedures” as the most important factor among others to ensure safety in the aviation industry. An interesting finding from this study is that the Senior-level management believes that the management practices employed in their organization are proactive enough to allocate resources, to ensure operational safety, address high-risk scenarios, and promote blame-free reporting of safety-related incidents which is challenged by the respondents working in Mid-level management. Another significant revelation is that the more experienced employees perceive that the “Safety management systems” employed in their organization are not effective and there is a significant room for improvement in the safety reporting and safety management practices in their organization. Based on the findings, it is concluded that the service providers could do better in improving individual’s safety practices, facilitating safety reporting, and managing safety.