چكيده لاتين :
Background and aims: The safety culture in the High-Reliability Organizations (HRO) across various
industries of a country is described as a long-term competitive advantage that can be considered as a
factor in preventing costly events for organizations and countries. Therefore, promoting safety culture in
such organizations can be seen as one of the main concerns of the organization and government
managers and regulatory agencies. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the knowledge
management system and the safety culture variables among Iran's nuclear reactors staff.
According to Schein, organizational culture is a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group
learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well
enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to
perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems. Safety culture can be treated as one aspect of the
entire organizational culture. Any cultural constructions and cultural activities in an organization or
industry have to deal with collective learning. Therefore, any efforts to enhance the safety culture of an
organization should lead to positive learning experiences and cross the organizational learning
membrane. Subsequently, these positive experiences gradually will penetrate to the organizational
learning membrane and mix with the basic assumptions of organization members at this time new
cultural assumptions will emerge. The authors believe that organizations via knowledge management
systems can acquire knowledge and the culture of knowledge (according to practice-based perspective to
knowledge) to develop their culture or promote their safety culture. For this reason, the implemented
knowledge management system in an organization can be seen as a factor in promoting the concept of
safety culture in that organization. Consequently, it is expected that a positive correlation is observed
between these two variables over a relatively long term period. In this research, the knowledge
management system has been considered in an exogenous construct and a reflective model about its core
processes and safety culture variable. The reason behind this model is that the concept of knowledge
management can exist as a pure entity in the organization because according to the perception of authors
from the concept of practice-based perspective to knowledge the epistemology of knowledge
management is related to organizational learning not to some processes in the organizations. This notion
of knowledge management is opposed to the objective perspective and calls for a deeper understanding
of learning and knowledge in organizations.
Methods: The research data were collected from employees in Iran nuclear reactors located in Tehran,
Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr cities using a paper questionnaire. In these facilities, responses were acquired
from 98 respondents, representing the tow functional sectors of the organization: 1- safety-related
sections like HSE and radiation protection sectors 2- other operating sections like engineering, technical
support, and sectors that are engaged in core operation of the organization. The respondents were
categorized as follows: 30 (30 percent) were technicians; 56 (56 percent) were experts; 12 (12 percent)
were supervisors; With regards to gender all respondents were (100 percent) male.
Knowledge management processes were measured by inquiring the respondents to reply to a set of items
on a scale from 1 to 7 (1 completely disagree, 7 completely agree). These 25 Items were drawn from the
Organisational Renewal Capability Inventory survey (Kianto, 2008). Kianto (2016) states that: “In sum,
the literature typically identifies four to six knowledge management processes that are cyclically
interrelated. Similar to these views, this paper proposes that KM processes can be divided into five main
types: knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, knowledge codification, and
knowledge retention. Although these types are, to some extent, interrelated and overlapping, and are
cyclically interrelated, they are individually distinguishable because of their different foci.” The scale for
knowledge acquisition tested the significance and fluency of knowledge acquired from extraorganizational
sources, while the scale for knowledge sharing pointed horizontal knowledge flows inside
the organization. Knowledge retention addressed the constancy and conservation of knowledge inside
the organization. Items for knowledge creation addressed the periodicity and the foundation of new idea
development in various groups of activities. Items for knowledge codification looked at the amount of
documentation and storage and the scope of knowledge repositories.
To measure the construct of safety culture, respondents were asked to answer questions similar to the one on the previous scale from 1 to 7 (1= strongly disagree and 7= strongly agree). These questions were
drawn from the IAEA's 2017 Safety Culture Perception Questionnaire for License Holders (IAEA
SCPQ-LH, 2017). The IAEA Safety Culture Perception Questionnaire for License Holders (SCPQ-LH)
is one of five data collection methods used by the International Atomic Energy Organization to perform
safety culture assessments. The questionnaire has been developed by an international group of experts
with skillfulness in organizations safety culture, nuclear safety issues and questionnaire development,
chaired by Dr. Mark Fleming, St Mary’s University, Canada.
The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM), directed using the partial least squares
(PLS) package (version 3 of SmartPLS). The first step was to assess the validity and reliability of the
measurement model. Subsequently to test the hypotheses and examine connections between the study
variables the structural model was used. In addition to testing the research model, the authors wanted to
assess the relationship between knowledge management processes and safety cultures in more detail so
the research model was tested for three groups of employees: 1- whole sample data 2- safety-related
employees (like HSE or radiation protection sections employees, N=46) 3- operator related employees
(like engineering and technical support or various operator groups sections, N=52).
Results: According to this research findings, knowledge management processes accounted for nearly 57
percent of variance for whole employees. Therefore, establishing knowledge management processes in a
high-reliability organization like nuclear reactor operators is significantly linked with safety culture.
Interestingly, severity of this relationship differs as a function of job characteristics and the type or
content of knowledge that is to be found in the scope of the knowledge management system for that
group of employees because knowledge management processes explained a larger amount of the
variance of safety culture (62 percent) for safety-related employees and a smaller amount for other
operator employees (53 percent). For this reason, phrases like Nuclear Knowledge Management (NKM)
or safety-related knowledge management which is used in the International Atomic Energy Organization
or other national or international institutions is justified and acceptable. In addition to this, organizations
can enhance the safety culture by using design for their knowledge management system and
emphasizing the development and dissemination of safety knowledge in the organization. This type of
knowledge management system may be referred to as a strategic knowledge management system for
safety. The consistency of the results obtained from the reflective model for knowledge management and
failure to obtain reliable and meaningful results for the model in which the knowledge management
construct was applied endogenously in the formative model with its indicators can be seen as evidence
of the validity of the reflective model used in this study. It should be noted, indicators in the reflective
models are manifestations of the constructs whereas indicators are defining characteristics of the
constructs in the formative models and, from item relationships with construct antecedents and
consequences point of view, indicators are required to have the same antecedents and consequences in a
reflective model. Conversely, indicators in the formative models have not the same antecedents and
consequences. It points out, this variable should be considered as a deep and independent concept in the
organization that relates to deeper concepts such as organizational learning and organizational culture
and must be evaluated with an impact on organizational learning.
Conclusion: To summarize, the real learning in organizations is a subject that occurs in deep
organizational layers (according to Shine's organizational culture model) and the actual results of
knowledge management systems should be sought in influencing these layers and points issue can lead
to a more comprehensive definition of the concept of knowledge management in organizations with
regard to its impact on organizational learning and other contextual issues such as organizational culture.
This capability of the knowledge management system makes it as an agent in improving issues such as
safety culture in the industries of countries.
It should be noted that the results of this study cannot be directly used as a degree to evaluate safety
culture in these facilities. The lack of women in this study was one of the constraints of this study that
could be covered in future surveys with access to more employees.
