Occupational Culture Research Articles

Terapia ocupacional e cultura: dimensões em diálogo

Abstract This manuscript aims to deepen and enrich discussions surrounding the intersection of occupational therapy and culture. It explores the relationship between these fields across three different dimensions: i) the cultural aspects of human activities in occupational therapy; ii) the influence of culture in the historical evolution and constitutive processes of occupational therapy, where the arts play a central role; and iii) the potential for culture to serve as a field of practice for occupational therapists, informed by cultural policies and the recognition of culture as a human right. In this framework, culture acquires different contours, providing insights into its relevance for human activities within the scope of occupational therapy. The present debate proposes that culture should be considered in the context of individual, community, and territorial human activities. These activities also participate in hegemonic processes of power that require an occupational-therapeutic approach, one that is cognizant of the complexities of cultural reproduction, hierarchical systems, classifications, violations, and colonization processes, as well as resistance to these factors. The study posits that the links between art, culture, and occupational therapy are merely coincidental but are important to the profession’s historical development and ongoing practice. Moreover, it contends that there exists a specialized field of action directly related to cultural policies, one that requires its own set of theoretical and methodological frameworks. This, in turn, enables potential collaboration with health, social assistance, education, and other sectors.

Professional burnout and patient safety culture in Primary Health Care.

to analyze the association between the risk of occupational exhaustion (burnout) and safety culture in Primary Health Care. ross-sectional study conducted in 18 Primary Health Care Units in the Northeast of Brazil. Three questionnaires were used: sociodemographic, Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee. seventy-eight healthcare workers participated, of which 64.1% presented a reduced risk of burnout; and 11.5%, a high risk (p=0.000). The following were identified as weakened dimensions of safety culture: Work pressure and pace; Owner, managing partners, leadership support; Overall ratings on quality; and Overall rating on patient safety. an association was found between low risk of developing burnout syndrome and positive evaluation of safety culture.

Co-opting “Danger” in Specialized Media for the Police

Widespread protests for racial justice during the summer of 2020 raised foundational questions about the role of the police in U.S. society. In this article, the authors analyze an underexplored body of media representations that perform ideological work in this context. The authors examine specialized media targeting a law enforcement audience, asking how news articles published on the Web site Police1 represented the police profession and the protests for racial justice over a two-year period. The authors map major themes using topic modeling and qualitative content analysis. They find that the articles represent police work as dangerous and heroic and as simultaneously professional, legitimate, and accountable to broader legal and political systems. In addition, articles disproportionately represent the dangers experienced by police officers relative to the dangers caused by policing. Co-opting the concept of danger may reinforce the warrior mentality of police occupational culture, while precluding recognition of the patterned and racialized harms of policing.

Emergent Cultural Contradictions from Overlapping Cultural Levels in Information Systems Development

Research exploring the cultural influence on information system development (ISD) projects tends to focus on a single level of influence (e.g., organizational culture) or cultural incompatibility between one or two cultural levels that are assumed to be discretely separate and static (e.g., national and organizational culture). In contrast, our research conceptualizes culture as dynamic and emergent, with varying levels of overlapping cultures that occur simultaneously in ISD projects (e.g., organizational and occupational culture overlaps). The case study method is used to examine two strategic projects in a single organization in South Africa. The findings describe how the overlap of different cultural levels gives rise to cultural contradictions in ISD projects. Understanding the relevance of the multiple cultures that exist in ISD projects offers further opportunity for refining explanations of cultural contradictions. Cultural contradictions that emerge from cultural overlaps during ISD are conceptualized as five distinct types: Vision Contradictions, Priority Contradictions, Process Contradictions, Role Contradictions, and Technology Contradictions. Despite variation in the context of each project, there is a similarity in the nature and effect of emergent cultural contradictions. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing cultural contradictions in and influences on ISD projects.

The Anthropologist as a City Bus Driver: Researching Urban Transport Using Autoethnography

This article examines city bus drivers’ behaviour, culture, and daily life in their work environment – particularly their mutual communication, relationships between drivers and passengers, issues faced, and feelings experienced by city bus drivers when performing their job. I present data through autoethnographic testimony depicting my personal experience as an anthropologist-bus driver in Prague. The terrain showed that autoethnography is a crucial research tool for obtaining otherwise difficult-to-access data in the urban environment of occupational culture. I argue that to obtain valid information, it is possible to become members of the researched community and try to think like them. To avoid excessive subjectivity, rather than engaging in collaborative autoethnography, I rather propose contextualizing personal testimony within scholarly literature as well as the experiences of co-workers gained through interviews conducted from the position of a non-researcher.

Motivational factors for occupational safety and health improvements: A mixed-method study within the Swedish equine sector

A well-functioning systematic occupational safety and health management is beneficial for both individuals and organizations, and employee motivation seems to be crucial for positive outcomes. Occupational safety and health issues are a major concern for the Swedish equine sector since the work environment in horse stables is known to be characterized by low mechanization, high physical workloads, and high injury risks. The purpose of this study was to gain an increased understanding of how systematic occupational safety and health management is performed and which factors that influence motivation for occupational safety and health improvements in the Swedish equine sector. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, based on quantitative data from questionnaires and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, was conducted. Various statistical analyses were performed to obtain quantitative data and an abductive applied thematic analysis was applied for the qualitative data. The results indicate that both intrinsic motivators, i.e. attitudes, values, and influence, as well as contextual factors such as motivational management, occupational culture, and workplace resources, influence compliance in systematic occupational safety and health management and participation in occupational safety and health improvements, which in turn affect workplace outcomes regarding safety and health. The positive relationship found between an implemented and functioning systematic occupational safety and health management and employee motivation for occupational safety and health improvements indicate the importance of employee involvement and participation. Understanding the motivational factors for occupational safety and health improvements from an employee perspective is an important step to creating healthy and sustainable workplaces.

Culture and well-being among sworn officers: an empirical examination

PurposeThis study aims to bridge the police culture and the police employee well-being literature by demonstrating significant linkages between the two.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examined the effects of culture on the well-being of officers in one police agency in the western United States during the summer of 2020. Using individual-level data, the authors model the association between officer perceptions of occupational culture and personal well-being for 125 sworn employees.FindingsThe results indicate that, for individual sworn officers, their adherence to elements of culture is related to well-being; specifically, burnout (BO) exhaustion, BO disengagement, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Additionally, the cultural attitudes of administration, and citizens in the population, are both consistent predictors of officer well-being.Originality/valueThis study provides an important linkage between the police culture and police well-being literature, which to date has been given limited attention.

Police culture, transparency and civilian oversight: A case study of the National City Police Department

The aim of this article is to take stock of theorizing around the concept of police culture, the degree to which it may be static or dynamic, and the ways in which these collectively shared practices and ideals influence and are influenced by social structural problems. We take a “ground-up” approach to this problem by conducting interviews with officers and staff from a relatively small Southern California police department (National City Police Department). The interviews were aimed at gauging officer opinions on the issues of civilian oversight and departmental transparency. These were conducted using Q-sorts, which prompt the interviewee to rank order responses to the questions. These answers were subjected to exploratory factor analysis, the function of which is to take steps towards ascertaining latent causal relationships that underlie correlational relationships. The inductive nature of this methodological approach limits its generalizability but allows for exploration into open-ended questions that can serve as bases for the expansion or refashioning of theoretical approaches. Overall, our findings suggest a need for further exploration into the extent to which demographic and experiential characteristics may underlie a more diversified police occupational culture than the traditional police culture narrative suggests.

Police stress: the role of occupational culture and officer characteristics

PurposeThe purpose of the current study was to augment the police culture and stress literature by empirically examining the impact of features of the internal and external work environment, as well as officer characteristics, on police officer stress.Design/methodology/approachThe current empirical inquiry utilized survey data collected from street-level officers in a mid-sized urban police department in a southern region of the United States (n = 349).FindingsThis study revealed that perceived danger, suspicion of citizens and cynicism toward the public increased police occupational stress, while support from supervisors mitigated it. In addition, Black and Latinx officers reported significantly less stress than their White counterparts.Research limitations/implicationsWhile this study demonstrates that patrol officers' perceptions of the external and internal work environments (and race/ethnicity) matter in terms of occupational stress, it is not without limitations. One limitation related to the generalizability of the findings, as results are gleaned from a single large agency serving a metropolitan jurisdiction in the Southeast. Second, this study focused on cultural attitudes and stress, although exact connections to behaviors are more speculative. Finally, the survey took place prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the killing of George Floyd (and others), which radically shook police–community relationships nationwide.Practical implicationsPolice administrators should be cognizant of the importance that views of them have for patrol officer stress levels. Moreover, police trainers and supervisors concerned with occupational stress of their subordinates should work toward altering assignments and socialization patterns so that officers are exposed to a variety of patrol areas, in avoiding prolonged assignments of high social distress.Originality/valueThe study augmented the police culture and stress literature by empirically uncovering the individual-level sources of patrol officers' job-related stress. This study builds off of Paoline and Gau's (2018) research using data collected some 15 years ago by examining a more contemporary, post–Ferguson, context.

Ambiguous culture in Greenland police: Proposing a multi‐dimensional framework of organizational culture for Human Resource Management theory and practice

AbstractThis article places ambiguity at the centre of Human Resource Management theory and practice of organizational culture and advances a multi‐dimensional framework that makes productive use of tensions between cultural integration and differentiation. Providing an illustrative analysis of Greenland Police, we identify a clash between a strong integrational pull and a similarly powerful differentiating force, involving an integrated occupational culture and differentiated national sub‐cultures. This clash, we show, becomes productive when organizational members articulate and enact ambiguous identities. Emphasising the contextuality of organizational culture, we do not believe the empirical findings to be generalisable, but, instead, offer the analytical framework for studying multi‐dimensional organizational culture as our main contribution. Conceptually, we emphasise how ambiguity is articulated in and between integration and differentiation, thus enhancing the relationality of the dimensions. The practical aim is to set ambiguous dynamics in motion that enable productive relations between different cultural dimensions.

Have you met Angus? Development and evaluation of a social marketing intervention to improve personal flotation device use in commercial fishing

Introduction: Drowning is the leading cause of death among commercial fishermen in the United States. Approximately 30% of all commercial fishing fatalities are attributed to falls overboard. One of the simplest and most affordable ways to prevent these fatalities is for crewmembers to wear personal flotation devices (PFDs) while on deck. An examination of over 200 fatal falls overboard in the U.S. fishing industry revealed that none of the victims were wearing PFDs when they died. PFDs are not required to be worn by commercial fishermen in the United States, so this study was designed to encourage behavior change using targeted health communication and social marketing. Methods: This study developed, implemented, and evaluated a multi-media social marketing campaign featuring a fictitious, culturally-relevant spokesman designed to look, talk, and act like the target audience. The messages were crafted to address common barriers to PFD adoption and misconceptions about fleet-specific risks for fatalities from falls overboard. The campaign was evaluated over two seasons of fishing to look at message retention and intent toward action following exposure to the campaign materials. Results: Survey respondents indicated overall positive opinions about the spokesman and the messages. Results also show a reported change in behavior related to using PFDs while working on deck. Discussion: Targeted multi-media messaging can influence behavior of workers in high-risk occupations in remote locations. Safety message development should focus on occupational culture to create valid and authentic communication products for workers in high-risk industries.

Development of occupational health culture scale: A study based on miners and construction workers.

Culture is an essential influence on effectiveness of workplace health promotion, which can promote occupational health protection behavior. The aim of this research was to develop and validate an occupational health culture scale available to Chinese workers. Occupational health culture scale (OHCS) was developed based on elements of health culture and safety culture in workplace. Nine techniques steps of scale development were used, including a 15-member expert group, 10 workers for cognitive interview, and 1,119 questionnaires (from 710 miners and 409 construction workers) for formal investigation. Welch's variance analysis, independent samples t-test, Kruskal–Wallis test, Spearman correlation analysis was employed, respectively, to verified nine hypotheses about impact relationship on OHCS score. After the analysis reliability and validity, the final scale consisted of 21 items in five domains: leadership support, co-workers support, values, policy and norms, employee involvement, physical environment. Moreover, respirable dust concentration from individual sampler had the largest negative correlation coefficient on OHCS score, −0.469 (p < 0.01). The development of an occupational health culture among Chinese workers is necessary for the sustainability of human resources and the implementation of corporate responsibility.

INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF CONSTRUCTION SECTOR EMPLOYEES ON THE OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY CULTURE LEVELS AND SAFE BEHAVIORS

Araştırmanın konusunu oluşturan İş Sağlığı ve Güvenliği (İSG) kültürünün güvenli davranışlar üzerindeki etkisinin incelenmesi için dünyada ve ülkemizde ekonomiler için lokomotif konumda bulunan, iş kazalarının yoğun bir şekilde gerçekleştiği inşaat sektörü tercih edilmiştir. Araştırmanın örneklemini İstanbul’da bulunan üç farklı konut inşaatı projesinde çalışan 205 kişi oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmada veri toplamak için kullanılan anket formu 3 bölümden oluşmaktadır. Birinci bölümünde kişisel bilgi formu, ikinci bölümde Olcay (2021) tarafından geliştirilmiş olan İSG kültürü ölçeği, üçüncü bölümde ise Neal, Griffin ve Hart (2000) tarafından geliştirilmiş olan ve Dursun (2011) tarafından Türkçe’ye uyarlanan Güvenli Davranış Ölçeği yer almaktadır. Sonuçlara göre, puanlar normal dağılıma sahip olmadığından parametrik olmayan analiz tekniklerinin yapılmasına karar verilmiştir. Bu çalışmada katılımcıların demografik özelliklerinin İSG kültürü algı düzeyleri ve güvenli davranışları üzerinde çok fazla etkiye sahip olmadığı görülmektedir. Katılımcıların gelir düzeyine göre genel iş güvenliği farkındalığı İSG kültürü ölçeği toplam puanları anlamlı bir farklılık göstermiştir. Çocuk sahibi olmayan çalışanların İSG eğitimi-iletişim puanları anlamlı olarak daha yüksek bulunmuştur. Bir yakını iş kazası geçiren çalışanların İSG kültürü ölçeği toplam puanları anlamlı olarak daha yüksek bulunmuştur. İSG kültürü ölçeği toplam puanları arttıkça, Güvenliğe uyma, güvenliğe katılma ve güvenli davranış ölçeği toplam puanlarının da arttığı gözlenmiştir.

Police Chief Culture: A View From the Top

Prior research on police culture has focused primarily on line officers. This study examined culture at the upper administrative level by identifying a taxonomy of police chiefs based on their role orientations. Relevant predictors of culture types based on chief, department, and jurisdiction characteristics were also tested. Data come from a survey of 460 local police chiefs in Texas and 2013–2017 census estimates from the American Community Survey. Five groups of chiefs were observed in the data: service-oriented, peace-keeper, law and order professionals, lay-lows, and traditionalists. Having a graduate education, being an internal hire, total years of experience in law enforcement, department size, and residential instability levels significantly differentiated the groups. This study sheds insight into occupational culture from the upper administrative level of police organizations.

Pengaruh Budaya Kesehatan dan Keselamatan Kerja (K3) terhadap Kinerja Karyawan PT. Angkasa Pura Logistik pada Masa Pandemi COVID-19 di Bandar Udara Internasional Yogyakarta, Kulon Progo

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PT. Angkasa Pura Logistik reduce employees until the remaining 75 employees. With the decrease in the number of employees, the workload per individual also increases. It can increase the risk to occupational safety and health. In addition, the threat of a new variant of COVID-19 makes the occupational health and safety (OHS) culture need to be considered. This research determines whether the occupational health and safety (OHS) culture affect the performance of PT. Angkasa Pura Logistik's employee during the COVID-19 pandemic at Yogyakarta International Airport. This study uses quantitative research methods, with employees of PT. Angkasa Pura Logistik at Yogyakarta International Airport as research subjects. The number of research samples was 63 people, determined by the Slovin formula. From the research that has been done, the following results are obtained: 1.) Occupational health and safety culture have a significant effect on the performance of employees of PT. Angkasa Pura Logistik during the COVID-19 pandemic at Yogyakarta International Airport. It is based on the value of t count (6.223) &gt; t table (1.670), 2) The value of R Square of 38.8% obtained from the coefficient of determination test. So it is known that the occupational and safety culture (independent variable) has the influence of 38.8% on employee performance. A total of 61.2% were influenced by other variables outside of this research.

The Mediating Role of Safety Climate in the Relationship between Transformational Safety Leadership and Safe Behavior—The Case of Two Companies in Turkey and Romania

Safety leadership, safe behavior, and safety climate, which are important parts of occupational safety culture, are important in terms of preventing occupational accidents and making the working environment ergonomic. In this context, this study aims to examine the mediating effect of the safety climate on the relationship between transformational leadership and safe behavior. Research was carried out with 287 participants working in two manufacturing plants, one from Turkey and one from Romania. The two data sets were consolidated into a single database (both companies being providers of manufacturing products for the same client in the automotive industry) and were analyzed using the Preacher and Hayes plugin in the SPSS 21 package program because of the research interest in investigating safety behavior in the manufacturing field. The results of the analysis showed that the safety climate had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between transformational leadership and safe behavior. In addition, the study results demonstrated that transformational safety leadership has a significant influence on employees’ perceptions of safety climate and plays an important role in occupational safety-related behaviors. Research results were helpful for practitioners (managers in both companies) and researchers in understanding the importance of safety-climate and transformational safety leadership practices in increasing occupational safety-related behaviors.

‘You can’t un-see what you’ve seen’: An ex-prison officer's autoethnographic account of suicide and self-harm in a UK male adult prison

Internationally, prisons are challenging environments for officers and prisoners, and suicide and self-harm have ramifications for both parties. Suicide and self-harm in prison far exceed prevalence in the general population and officers experience many psychological and emotional impacts including distress, bereavement, guilt, shame, accountability, desensitisation and PTSD. This article explores relational and institutional dynamics and cultural expectations placed upon officers when dealing with suicide/self-harm. Prison officer culture can be limited in supporting officers around trauma and it can be perceived as stigmatising and a weakness to seek help. This article explores a former prison officer's experience of dealing with trauma around self-harm and suicide including the first experience of suicide, moral conflict and the impact of losing a colleague to suicide. I worked as a prison officer at a category ‘B’ local prison in the (UK) between 2003 and 2009 and kept a reflective journal during service. Drawing upon Autoethnography (AE), I seek to explore the lived experience of trauma from an ‘insider perspective’ using prison research to interpret retrospective accounts. Concepts around emotional labour, occupational morality and prison officer occupational culture/ socialisation are used to highlight the complexities of prison officer work around suicide/self-harm. The prison service (UK) needs to reduce stigma in officers who need help and support around mental health and coping with trauma, with strategies like peer support programmes, regular supervision/mandatory counselling and extensive debriefs to support officers in the aftermath of traumatic critical incidents.

A new era in the labor protection of workers: safe and healthy environment as one of the goals of sustainable development

The course developed by the UN General Assembly to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the context of the introduction of new technologies, automation and robotization of production naturally determines the transformation of the approach to the legal regulation of labor protection. At the same time, the established practice of applying labor legislation and statistical data have revealed a number of problems of inefficient interaction between employees and employers on issues of ensuring safe working conditions. The article aims to analyze the current legislation in the field of labor protection from the perspective of the triune essence of labor relations. We have paid special attention to the influence of a combination of biological phenomena, psychological factors and social events on the development of occupational diseases and injuries, ignoring which significantly levels the effectiveness of current requirements and rules in the field of occupational safety. Empirical research consists of several stages. At the first stage the authors have carried out a selection of norms that are novelties in the field of legal regulation of labor protection. Within the framework of the second stage, using systematic, formal-legal and comparative-legal methods, researchers have analyzed these norms from the point of view of the triune essence of the labor legal relationship. Subject of the study is the rights and obligations of employers in the field of labor protection enshrined in legislation and necessary to ensure safe working conditions. At the third stage, we have identified psychological factors and social phenomena that accompany an employee during his life, and not only during working hours. At the last stage, using systematic, formal-legal and comparative-legal methods, experts have analyzed the influence of the combination of these factors and phenomena on the receipt of occupational diseases and injuries by employees. The results of the study show that the current legislation does not take into account that psychological factors and social events can act in a causal relationship with the development of occupational diseases in workers and their occupational injuries. At the same time, there are no legal obstacles for the employer to take into account these determinants when regulating the sphere of labor protection at the local level. Improving professional skills and knowledge in the field of occupational safety, occupational safety culture, the level of accessibility to information about their rights, including in the field of occupational safety, taking into account the social and structural characteristics of conditions mediating the life of workers - all this will increase the effectiveness of legal regulation of the field of occupational safety at the local level. Conclusion. The study concludes that the most important issues remain unaddressed, among which are the creation of a psychologically comfortable working atmosphere, the prevention of professional burnout of employees, the possibility of recognizing professional burnout as an occupational disease with all the consequences that follow from this. In addition, the authors came to the conclusion that, in order to implement the protection of personal data of employees, a more detailed regulation at the legislative level of the process of monitoring by the employer of the labor activity of employees. Ethics. This study did not require the conclusion of the Ethics Committee.

Creating Occupational Health and Safety Culture within the Scope of Social Responsibility Role and Function of Public Relations

Creating Occupational Health and Safety Culture within the Scope of Social Responsibility Role and Function of Public Relations

Managing inclusion or preparing for exclusion? A critical examination of gender-responsive management of female Central and Eastern European prisoners in England and Wales

This article examines practitioner understandings and implementation of gender-responsive support within female prisons in England and Wales in the context of a growing emphasis on effective deportation of foreign national prisoners. Drawing on a case study of female prisoners from Central and Eastern states of the European Union (EU), we argue that the aims of gender-responsivity, designed to address women's gendered vulnerabilities to support their re-entry in the UK, are pragmatically re-shaped to accommodate the uncertainty surrounding their immigration status. We show how in practice, gender-responsive support functions at best to ‘manage’ gendered needs of women who are ‘not of interest’ to immigration authorities, and at worst to legitimate exclusion by side-lining vulnerabilities of women deemed as having ‘no right to remain’ in the UK. This occurs in the context of limited access to legal redress to challenge deportation decisions, unevenly spread resources in the female prison estate, and practitioners’ occupational cultures which emphasise paternalistic valuations of female foreign national prisoners’ femininity. We locate the findings in criminological debates about ‘gendering of borders’ and conclude with a reflection on the implications for advocacy at the time of increasingly restrictive immigration controls following the UK's exit from the EU.