BEHAVIOR DEFINITION AND IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE OF JUST CULTURE

I. Just Culture – concept and definition

David Marx (2001): “… discipline needs to be tied to the behaviour of individuals and the potential risks their behaviour presents more than the actual outcomes of their actions.”

Sidney Dekker (2008): “… is a culture of trust, learning and accountability”.

James Reason (1997): “ Just Culture is an atmosphere of trust in which people are encouraged, or even rewarded for providing essential safety-related information, but in which they are also clear about where the line must be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

A successful Just Culture promotes questioning attitude, is resistant to complacency and is committed to excellence. This fosters both personal accountability and corporate self-regulation in safety matters.”

From May 12^th report:

A Just Culture is a culture in which employees must be accountable for their actions and, in return, are provided assurance that they will be treated in a fair manner following an incident or accident.

A Just Culture also means that unsafe acts can be learned from. The first goal of any manager is to improve safety and production. Any event related to safety, especially human or orgnisational errors, must be first considered as a valuable opportunity to improve operations through experience feedback and lessons learnt.

It has been acknowledged by senior management at Vietnam Airlines that frontliners who report issues are usually not the instigators of accidents and incidents, and that they are more likely to inherit bad situations that have been developing over a long period. In order for other relevant departments and divisions to learn from these incidents, leaders need to recognise that human error will never be eliminated, only moderated. In order to combat human errors, we need to change the conditions in which humans work.
The effectiveness of countermeasures depends on the willingness of individuals to report their errors, which requires an atmosphere of trust in which people are encouraged for providing essential safety-related information (Reason, 1997).