Safety plays an important role in virtually every High Risk Organization, be it a refinery, a nuclear plant, a railroad or a hospital. High Risk Organizations are not necessarily dangerous - they simply do work that carries an inherent risk. To describe the way these organizations deal with safety the term "the safety culture" is often used. This is not the same as a Culture of Safety. 

Like people, organizations will develop naturally, and so will their safety culture. Most High Risk Organizations consist of well-meaning, well-trained people and it is inevitable that they are always striving to be better, and safer. And still it turns out that despite all these efforts organizations sometimes get stuck in their development. This usually happens just at the point when they think they have things under control, at the "Calculative" level.

To move to a true safety culture, an organization needs to move beyond just following the rules. For this to be possible, some extraordinary things need to happen. People need to start trusting themselves and each other, and re-learn to take personal responsibility for their environment.