Description

For Eskom to enhance the change and transformation of the behaviours and practices of its employees to support its culture of safety performance, it will have to adopt a framework that places safety change and transformational leadership at the centre of the initiatives for entrenching its safety performance culture. For a culture of safety performance to diffuse throughout the organisation, the application of the relevant change and transformational leadership and measures is critical for influencing the change and transformation of the employees’ behaviours and practices. While using Fleming and Lardner’s (1999) safety culture maturity model as a theoretical framework, this thesis diagnoses the effectiveness of the strategies used for enhancing the entrenchment of Eskom’s culture of safety performance, so as to identify the major inhibitors and the appropriate model that can be suggested for improving the implementation of a safety culture in Eskom's construction, operating and maintenance sites. From the thematic analysis of the interview findings which are triangulated with the results of the focus group discussions from a total of seventy employees drawn from the Eskom’s construction, operating and maintenance sites in Limpopo Province, it is found that the strategies that improve the implementation of a safety performance management culture among the employees are often linked to the: initiatives that shape employees’ attitudes, perceptions and behaviours, safety competencies, motivators (pecuniary and non-pecuniary motivators), and safety leadership. Despite the fact that Eskom seems to have made significant inroads towards the implementation of its safety performance culture, the triangulation of the empirical findings with the theoretical findings indicate that there is a challenge of a transformational approach to enhance the entrenchment of Eskom’s culture of safety performance. Eskom is found to face the challenge of managing the change and transformation linked to the implementation of the measures for entrenching its safety culture. Besides poor communication and activities’ coordination, findings also revealed that there are limitations linked to poor monitoring and evaluation of the employees’ compliance with the relevant safety improvement measures. Despite limitations linked to the poor management of change and transformation, as well as the effective monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the implementation of safety performance, it still emerged from both theories and empirical findings that the effectiveness of safety culture management impacts positively on the organisational performance. In a bid to influence the change and transformation of behaviours to enhance Eskom’s safety culture, Westrum’s (2004) typology of organisational culture and Fleming and Lardner’s (1999) safety culture maturity model are modified to come up with a model to improve the implementation of Eskom’s safety culture. Future studies can still explore how the model can be used for improving a culture of safety performance in industries and sectors such as building and road construction.