CHAPTER - 1

1. INTRODUCTION

Safety culture has become an important factor in the modern organizations to ensure safety of the
workplace. It is critical to determine the factors that affect the safety culture of the organization,
this requires investigation of the workplace and interviews with employees and management.
Having a high
life considered. This study will discuss the assessment of safety culture among pilots in a major
Middle Eastern aviation company. The research objective is focusing on assessing the overall
safety culture of pilots in a major middle eastern airline company, conceptualizing by four factors
which are: formal aspects of safety, informal aspects of safety, operations personnel, and
organizational commitment, to see if it can adopt to represent their safety culture. Also, determine
if safety culture could impact on motivation and performance directly or indirectly and how
well their correlation. The research hypotheses study if safety
motivation had an effect on

performance. A socio-economic survey is conducted to assess the safety culture among pilots.
(Alsowayigh, M. 2014). The
method used is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using a statistical analysis software, to
analyze the relationship between the four factors and safety culture. Also, the correlation between
safety culture and the motivation and performance of pilots. This study will help the organization
to determine the factors which represent the safety culture of their and whether improving
affects their motivation and performance. The management will notice the weaknesses regarding
the safety system and safety personnel for enhancement. This study analyzed the data collected
using a complicated advance statical tool which is Structural Equation Modeling. It is very
beneficial to give estimations for the latent variables and assessing measurements error. Also,
testing the fit of the model to the data and make the necessary improvements, as well as
measuring the correlation among different variables.
 1.1 Problem Statement
the pilots lack of safety culture knowledge and its bad impact on pilots motivation and safety,
which impact on a proper functioning of flights which will lead to more violations of federal
airline rules as well as GACA (General Authority of Civil Aviation) regulations in which it will
results in an economical loss for a major middle eastern airline company. This lack of safety
culture knowledge is due to the lack of safety culture research in the airline industry in Saudi
Arabia.

1.2 Research Objective

The research objective is assessing the overall safety culture of pilots, conceptualizing by four
factors which are: formal aspects of safety, informal aspects of safety, operations personnel,
and organizational commitment, to see if it can adopt to represent their safety culture and
determine if safety culture could impact on motivation and performance directly or
indirectly and how well their correlation is.
 CHAPTER - 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION:
A comprehensive literature review type is used in this research, nine literature reviews has
been selected, which are as follows: Nuclear Safety, Safety Management Systems,
Development and Initial Validation of a Survey for Assessing Safety Culture Within Commercial
Flight Operations, and Sample Size Requirements for Structural Equation Models . Each one of
them is comprehensively listed below:

2.1.1 NUCLEAR SAFETY

This literature review was taken from the article which talked about uclear Safety It mentioned
the safety culture in The Nuclear Operations Analysis Center (NOAC) of the Oak. A team of
researchers started a program to study the safety in the organization. The program reviews
licensee event reports (LERs) which is an abstract to describe the occurrences during an event,
and that includes all kind of failures that could contribute to the event. The program studied those
operational events identify and categorize the core damage accidents in the organization. The
team have followed a program called
developed by John Thirion, who held a safety director position at Johnson & Johnson. This
program focuses of asking employees about their fears in trams of safety inside their workplace
after that the team will respond to those concerns. The Book have mentioned Perception
and highlighted its importance. First, it helps in measuring the effectiveness of safety
efforts. Second, it can be easily measured by surveys sent to the employees. Third, it helps in
highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the safety system, and more. The most important
part in this book that found was the survey itself. That was mentioned in the appendix under the
title EG&G Idaho Safety Norm Survey. The survey has multi categories such as Safety
Awareness, Teamwork, Communications, (OSTI gov 1993)
2.1.2 THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG WORK-RELATED PERCEPTIONS, EMPLOYEE
ATTITUDES, AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE: THE INTEGRAL ROLE OF
COMMUNICATION

Another research in 1998 was studying the performance of the employees in the organization.
This research shows how factors like teamwork, Well-Being/Stress Scale and Performance can
they effect performance and how important are they. The concern on the performance
part only. Found that out of nine questions only five are suitable for the project. (Rodwell. 1998)

2.1.3 SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND SAFETY CULTURE IN AIRCRAFT

MAINTENANCE ORGANISATIONS

A study in 2000 included analysis of Exposition in which it contains

information on maintenance management, maintenance procedures and quality systems
procedures. In addition, conducting qualitative interviews and publishing two surveys. The
interviews with the management focused on two main issues regarding safety policy and strategy.
These two issues are
forces regarding safety policy in each of the maintenance organizations. The results showed a
differentiation between the safety management systems and safety climate among the
maintenance organizations. Complying with task procedures and safety attitudes did not
differentiate among the organizations. This indicates that there are professional aircraft
technicians surrounding the four organizations. There is difference in the safety attitudes and
safety climate among the occupational groups. This indicates that there is a different
understanding and implementation of safety culture. (Mcdonald, 2000).
2.1.4 DEVELOPMENT AND INITIAL VALIDATION OF A SURVEY FOR ASSESSING
SAFETY CULTURE WITHIN COMMERCIAL FLIGHT OPERATIONS

questionnaire to assess the safety

culture among commercial flight operations focusing on five factors which are organizational
commitment, management involvement, pilot empowerment, reporting system, and accountability.
Thequestionnaire been sent to pilots and managers in U.S. airline. The questionnaire items were
identified
dimensions associated with flight operations. The questions were around the five factors and each
question has a 7-point Likert scale with a place for comments. In addition, a subject matter expert
provided feedback regarding the questionnaire items. The survey was sent to the pilots and the
management at a territorialairline. Based on the results observed from the preliminary survey they
had to make some modificationsas well as adding a brief demographic section. This adapted
survey contained 84 items and was implemented on a U.S. airline. The method used in analyzing
the data was Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA). The results illustrated a considerable amount
of misfit, so they had to revise the surveyonce again. They analyzed the five scales individually and
fit a single-factor model. The revised modelshowed a better fit however, it still did not fit the data
well. After refining the model and deleting some items, the results of the survey contained 55 items
were implemented and showed significant improvement and provided a detailed insight into
problem areas. Issues in writing caused many problems as well as closely related items. This
survey helped to enhance the understanding of safety culture and provided a validate safety
(Gibbons, Von Thaden 2006)
2.1.5 SAMPLE SIZE REQUIREMENTS FOR STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELS: AN
EVALUATION OF POWER, BIAS, AND SOLUTION PROPRIETY

In any research that uses Structure equation modeling (SEM) the sample size has a significant
impacton the final result of the research. If the sample size was less than the requirement sample
size the model fit will be weak and CFI, TLI, RMSEA and Chi- Square meet the fit criteria of
the model. A
determining the
result of the research was the minimum sample size requirement it varies
from 30 to 460 sample depending on the strength of the loading of the factors, how many factors
are included in the model,
the better result, and in this research the sample size will be vary from 150-200 to ensure to get
better result. (J Harrington. 2013)

Figure 2
2.1.6 ISLAMIA UNIVERSITY: IMPACT OF EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION ON EMPLOYEE
PERFORMANCE

In 2014 a team from The Islamia University of Bahawalpur in Pakistan made a study to know how
employee motivation can affect their performance. The team has applied the study using
regression analysis and the sample size of the study was the teachers in the public and private
schoolsfrom Bahawalpur City, Yazman city, and Alipur city, and the number of teachers who
participated was160 teachers. The survey was divided into two sections. First section involved the
demographic and personal questions. The second section involved the variables that this study
trying to measure such as: the motivation of the employees, their performance, intrinsic rewards,
and the employee perceivedtraining effectiveness.

Based on these variables the team has built four hypotheses to test the relationships between
thesevariables.

H1: "Employee motivation has a significant and positive relationship with employee

performance".H2: "Intrinsic reward has a significant and positive relationship with employee

performance".

H3: "Intrinsic reward has a significant and positive relationship with employee motivation".

H4: "Employee perceived training effectiveness has a significant and positive relationship with
employee motivation".

After applying the regression analysis, the team tested the hypothesis and came with these results
that there is a positive and significant relationship in H1, H2, H3 but for H4 it showed a negative
relationship. (Shahzadi. 2014)
2.1.7 SAFETY CULTURE IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION: DIFFERENCES IN PERSPECTIVE
BETWEEN CHINESE AND WESTERN PILOTS

This research was examining how the differences between airlines can affect the safety culture in
aviation. The airlines that examined in this research were Western and Chinese airline and the
scope was on the pilots of these two commercial airlines. The safety culture model that used was
including a"Just Culture" which has 25 questions, "Reporting Culture "which has 17 questions,
and "Learning Culture "which has 22 questions. In this research they collect the data by using
qualitative and quantitative approaches. In the qualitative approach they collect the data by
interviewing with the pilotsand the interviews questions subjected into five topics. The topics and
their findings are:

"Trust": the viewpoint of the Chinese pilots about just culture they have any trust issues with
thesystem the only trust issue they have is about the manager. Unlike the pilots in western
airlinewho do not have any trust issues with the system or the manger because the pilots believe
that the company have implemented the just culture to "make commitment and educate the
employees about more practical behavior".

"Guanxi": the viewpoint of the Chinese pilots is that if you are not in any of guanxi group this will
leadto negative consequences when they report because each group of people have their own
social relationship and due to guanxi culture the Chinese pilots are facing problems on building
relationships.
limitation or inequality system between the employees.

"High power distance": the Chinese pilots believe in the hierarchy, and they consider not to report
any errors that come from the superior because it will lead to negative consequences. Unlike
western pilotswho encourage to speak up wither was junior or senior pilot.

"Harmony among people": the Chinese pilots avoid reporting any other rule violation due to their
concern about maintaining harmony among people and the reason behind harmony among
people is self-preservation. Unlike western pilots who have the concept of r
is dealing with the problem not with the person.

"Information and knowledge sharing": one of the problems that found in the pilots in Chinese
airlineis lack of sharing information & knowledge especially between the junior and senior
pilots. Unlike western pilots who encourage sharing information and knowledge, they consider it
as necessary in the aviation industry.

After collecting the results from the qualitative approach, they used these results to build a
questionnaire for the quantitative phase. The survey included the three parts that mentioned
previouslyincluding an addition part which is demographic questions. At the end of the survey, it
shows that the cultural differences and perspectives have significant effect on safety culture in the
aviation. (Liao, 2015)
2.1.8 COLLEGIATE PROGRAM SAFETY CULTURE SURVEY - A COMPARISON OF
DISCIPLINES

In 2018, Middle Tennessee State University conduct a study on collegiate program students to
know the safety culture in aviation and to compare the discipline of each department the collegiate
has enrolled into. The aviation departments that participated in the study and provided data as
well as comparing between departments are flight, maintenance, and Unmanned Aircraft System
(UAS). The number of students who enrolled in this program were 507 but the total responses
that collected were188 responses. 127 respondents from flight department, 37 from maintenance,
and 24 from UAS. Threeseparate surveys were sent each department has its own survey and each
survey was consisted of a series likert-type scale questions and these questions was divided into
subscales which are departmental safety value, safety fundamentals, and risk assessment of
themselves and their view of others. After collecting the responses from each department, they
used ANOVA on mean score of each department to analyze the data and see is there any
significant differences. The result of this research after using ANOVA was there a significant
difference between the three departments in safety values,for safety fundamental all the groups
were significantly difference, and there are no significantdifferences between three departments
in risk assessment. (Backman, Siao. 2019)
 CHAPTER - 3

METHODOLGY

3.1.1 Data collection

The data will be collected using a socio-economic survey which is built to assess the safety culture
among pilots.

3.1.2 Sampling
The population in which it will take place in this study is the current working pilots at a major
airline company which are both pilots & first officers flying a fleet consisting of 4 types of aircraft
(airbus 330, airbus320, Boeing 787, and Boeing 777). The sample size suggested to have an
adequate result and to reduce the biases to an acceptable level is a minimum of 200 (Boomsma
& Hoogland, 2001; Kline, 2010). This will be the Chosen sample size method. the current
population is 738, so a response rate of 28% will be enough to meet the minimum needed
sample size. As mentioned above in the introduction, the survey questions are already validated
in other study (Alsowayigh, M. 2014).

As seen in the literature reviews, each research had its own method to approach the problem. At the

how much the employees know about safety culture. The second literature mentioned a model which
-
different aircraft maintenance organization and the study included:

Analysis of documentation.
Survey of safety climate & attitude.
Expected response in incident and compliance.

flight, maintenance, and UAS). And to

identify the differences between the departments they applied ANOVA test on the survey result. The
fourth studied how the differences between culture between airlines can impact aviation safety and
make a comparison between the Chinese and western pilots. Three surveys were measuring reporting
culture, learning culture, and just culture in the two commercial airlines. And each survey was divided
into five topics which are:
Trust, Guanxi, High power distance, Harmony among people, Information & knowledge sharing .

Sixth literature design contain a series of rational decision-making choices, the data collection method
was a self-administered questionnaire directly from participants. Two methods were preformed to
collect the data from the pilots, the questionnaire was distributed in both a web base and a paper-based
form. The questionnaire had five factors in the form of Likert Scale related to maintenance operations
which are Organizational Commitment (OC), Management Involvement (MI) Employee Empowerment
(EE), Accountability System (AS) and Reporting System (RS)

After collecting the

the inferential statistics are used to make inferences about data and show the strength of the linear
relationship among two variables. Identifying how two variables within subgroup can be different and
understanding the relationship of interdependencies variables with the variance in the dependent
variable, by using the multiple regression to provide the variance of the dependent variable. And then
analyze the variance u

These are the research that have been published. Each research used a different technique and model
to fit their study. On the other hand, in this research a survey built to measure the safety culture of pilots
for major Middle Eastern airline. The survey used is already validated and the method used is Structure
Equation Modeling (SEM) to measure the relationship between specific factors with safety culture.
 Figure 1.1 Conceptual Model of the hypothesis

represents the Safety culture would have

motivation of an employee and his or her performance. Finally, H4 is the hypothesis that the safety
culture would have an indirect impact on the performance. These entire hypotheses are tested using
software after the required data collected from a survey distributed among pilots.