The influence of organisational typology, strategy, leadership and psychological forces on UK offshore oil and gas industry safety performance.
type: CreativeWork
description: The UK Offshore Oil and Gas Industry is recognised as having made significant safety performance improvement progress, following the Piper Alpha disaster (6th July 1988), subsequent Public Inquiry and 106 recommendations made by the Cullen Report. However, accidents continue to occur on offshore assets due to leadership and organisational failures, poor behaviours, lack of operating discipline, asset integrity challenges and an absence of aligned safety strategy. Research was conducted through a strategic lens, looking across a typical operator company's value chain, and going beyond the predominant technical and engineering safety focus. Utilising safety climate as a leading indicator of safety performance, research explored the ways in which organisational typology, strategy, leadership and psychological forces contribute to safety performance on offshore assets. Research of this nature had not previously been conducted in the UK offshore oil and gas industry - triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data was utilised. Semi-structured interviews were conducted onshore with managers and supervisors to determine the organisational typology make-up of the value chain and associated safety strategy, with consideration for leadership and the psychological forces dynamic of human factors. An offshore workforce safety study was deployed at seven offshore assets. Under academic licence, the study utilised proven and validated data collection tools: authentic leadership questionnaire (ALQ); psychological capital questionnaire (PCQ); and the safety climate tool (SCT). The research identified organisational typology patterns across the value chain. Operator and contractor organisations were determined to typically identify as defenders and prospectors, while sub-contractors identified as analyzers and reactors. Considering safety performance at the offshore assets as measured by safety climate perception, it was concluded that organisational typology had no influence. …
abstract: The UK Offshore Oil and Gas Industry is recognised as having made significant safety performance improvement progress, following the Piper Alpha disaster (6th July 1988), subsequent Public Inquiry and 106 recommendations made by the Cullen Report. However, accidents continue to occur on offshore assets due to leadership and organisational failures, poor behaviours, lack of operating discipline, asset integrity challenges and an absence of aligned safety strategy. Research was conducted through a strategic lens, looking across a typical operator company's value chain, and going beyond the predominant technical and engineering safety focus. Utilising safety climate as a leading indicator of safety performance, research explored the ways in which organisational typology, strategy, leadership and psychological forces contribute to safety performance on offshore assets. Research of this nature had not previously been conducted in the UK offshore oil and gas industry - triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data was utilised. Semi-structured interviews were conducted onshore with managers and supervisors to determine the organisational typology make-up of the value chain and associated safety strategy, with consideration for leadership and the psychological forces dynamic of human factors. An offshore workforce safety study was deployed at seven offshore assets. Under academic licence, the study utilised proven and validated data collection tools: authentic leadership questionnaire (ALQ); psychological capital questionnaire (PCQ); and the safety climate tool (SCT). The research identified organisational typology patterns across the value chain. Operator and contractor organisations were determined to typically identify as defenders and prospectors, while sub-contractors identified as analyzers and reactors. Considering safety performance at the offshore assets as measured by safety climate perception, it was concluded that organisational typology had no influence. …
author: Spence, Philip Alexander
language: en
keywords: Organisational safety, Safety in the workplace, Risk management, Leadership, Oil and gas industry, Offshore working environments
date published: 2020
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:10:00Z
provider: Robert Gordon University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Robert Gordon University