Safety culture maturity models in occupational safety and health: An updated scoping review

Review study of the evidence underpinning ‘safety culture’ maturity models.

17 studies were included.

Tl;dr: the evidence supporting that they actually do what they purport to do, is limited.

Note: I’m not a fan of SC maturity models, but good to see efforts to describe the empirical landscape.

Extracts:

· “The vast majority of included studies (59 %, n = 10) referred to the development and application of a new (or adapted) safety culture maturity model”

· “Only two studies developed a new safety culture maturity model without field application … Out of 12, six studies were related to a new safety culture maturity model based on the Hudson model”

· “Reviewing the literature was the most applied method for identifying dimensions of safety culture maturity models”

· The dimensions used to evaluate SC maturity models was primarily Leadership and commitment, communication and information flow, participation and involvement, training and competence

· Indeed, they found that the maturity models preferred the above factors rather than “statistics of accidents, injuries, and occupational diseases”

· “Out of twelve studies developing a new safety culture maturity model, five carried out a reliability test such as Cronbach’s alpha and structural equation model … Of these, only two new safety culture maturity models were validated”

· “ In addition, it is worth noting that none of the studies applied a safety culture maturity model to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in the workplace”

· Most studies applied a qualitative method assessing dimensions of SC models and “this is likely to be biased due to subjective assessment mainly based on questionnaires and interviews. Only two studies applied quantitative methods”

· “80 % (13 out of 17) of the studies evaluating safety culture maturity models were located in upper-middle-income countries”

Ref: Curti, S., Gallo, M., Nocilla, M. R., Montagnani, A., Mattioli, S., Gnoni, M. G., & De Merich, D. (2025). Safety culture maturity models in occupational safety and health: An updated scoping review. Safety Science, 192, 107003.