Jun 24, 2012

Character and culture

I was going through a book titled 'Turning Point - Enlightening Essays on Life Part 1' published by Swaminarayan Aksharpith, Ahmedabad. In this book, there is a chapter on Character in which the quotation of Dwight L Mody is stated as 'Character is what you are in the dark'. 
National Petroleum Offshore Authority in its information booklet (A98443, Revision 1, Oct 2009) defined safety culture as 'Safety culture is how the organisation behaves when no one is watching'. From these two statements we can say that safety culture of an organization is the outcome of character of the individuals responsible for running the organization. Individuals makeup the organization and thus organization's culture is defined.
What we are doing in our day to day activities is not new to us. It is routine and we know how to do it safely. Still, we don't for various reasons. Nobody needs to supervise/watch us and tell us how to do a work in a safe manner. One need not tell us to read the established procedure, know the hazards, wear personal protective equipment, and so on. We know. Some of the tasks were known to us by our intuition / common sense. Still we ignore  for quick gains. We may complete a job without getting hurt ourselves or others. But, a day will come when we become victims of our own actions and that day we repent for our actions.