Contextualising safety culture: managerial insights from Australia and China

The construction industry remains one of the most hazardous sectors worldwide, where persistent accident rates reveal the limitations of relying solely on technical and regulatory controls. In this context, safety culture has been widely recognised as a critical determinant of performance. Yet while safety culture is theoretically understood as an organisational attribute reflecting shared values and norms related to safety, it is often operationalised in practice through compliance indicators and managerial initiatives. This study therefore examines how safety culture takes shape within construction projects in Australia and China through the everyday practices and interpretations of management teams operating under distinct socio-cultural and regulatory environments. Semi-structured interviews with 20 professionals were thematically analysed to identify recurring configurations of responsibility, authority, and engagement. The findings indicate that in Australia, participatory leadership and shared accountability were reinforced by relatively stable regulatory frameworks, whereas in China, hierarchical oversight and compliance-oriented enforcement were shaped by fragmented governance and production pressures. These results demonstrate how safety culture emerges differently across institutional contexts through contextually conditioned managerial practices. The study contributes to debates on the theory–practice divide in safety culture and provides insight into how institutional environments influence the formation of safety-related organisational patterns.