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RésuméCet article propose une approche anthropologique et structurée de la culture de sécurité, ancrée dans l’organisation, ses acteurs, leur travail, la technologie et ses risques et l’environnement. Le modèle adopté est celui de l’énigme et cela pour trois raisons : cette image rappelle que la culture de sécurité est, a priori de toute analyse, méconnue et imprévisible ; elle sous-tend également la complexité et les ressources qui nécessitent son analyse ; enfin elle rappelle l’analyse intrinsèquement partielle de la culture puisqu’il s’agit d’un phénomène aussi vaste que profond. Grâce au modèle de l’énigme, la culture de sécurité gagne en complexité et sophistication pour proposer une démarche analytique utile à la compréhension du fonctionnement des organisations. Dans ce modèle, la culture de sécurité prend la forme d’une configuration organisationnelle résultant de l’interaction dynamique entre des variables de trois niveaux différents (variables immédiates, voilées et enfouies), qui sont classées entre cinq domaines de variables (la technologie et ses risques, l’organisation, le groupe – relations inter et intra groupes, le travail et l’environnement).

The enigma of safety culture in risk organizations : an anthropological approachDuring the last twenty years, the notion of “safety culture” has inspired a considerable amount of research. The notion of safety culture is somewhat of a paradox because, while the concept of culture is extremely fuzzy, its relationship with safety is reasonably clear. “Safety culture,” therefore, seems to be something that nobody can clearly explain ; yet, everybody readily recognizes the existence of a link between culture and safety.The purpose of this paper is to propose an anthropological model of safety culture within which safety culture is called “an enigma”. Safety culture is called an “enigma” for three reasons. Firstly, safety culture is, before investigation, unknown. Secondly, it highlights its complexity and the time needed to understand it/. Thirdly, this model remembers that culture can only be partly understood because it is a very broad and deep phenomenon. From this point of view, safety culture provides an analytical framework to understand what happened, or what is happening, in an organization. From this point of view, it is normal that safety culture is, at the beginning of the analytical exercise, “unknown”.The model of the enigma is mainly inspired by the work of Clifford Geertz and E. Schein’s model. In our model, safety culture presents five domains of recurring variables such as the group and its features, the organization (formal and informal), the work, the technology and its risks, the environment. The variables can be expressed and detected at three cultural levels : the immediate, the implicit and the tacit level of safety culture. This model brings in four other notions, which allow one to dig deeper into the analysis of safety culture : the complexity of safety culture, the internal and external dynamics, and the organizational configuration. It proposes a structured vision of safety culture, which is anchored within the actors, the organization, the daily practices, the environment, the technology, and the hazards. The future and the usefulness of safety culture are, in our view, closely linked to the possibility of undertaking organizational changes as a result of the safety-culture analysis. Safety culture can provide a diagnostic of what happens within organizations and it can shape new ambitions ; however, it is not a changing tool. Only deep organizational changes and a new organizational design can contribute to, slowly, make practices evolve, and further on, ways of thinking and culture as well.