Decision Performance and Safety Performance: A Value-Focused Thinking Study in the Oil Industry

Considerable research has been performed to develop leading indicators of safety performance. We use value-focused thinking to understand the objectives and evaluation measures that frame a particular safety-related decision within an organization. These decisions are part of the safety culture. Our research partners were two oil shipping companies; we surveyed crewmembers on their tankers to evaluate performance in each decision objective on their vessel. We demonstrate that measurements of the achievement of these objectives are related to future safety performance and thus provide leading indicators of safety.