PhD Studentship in Safety Leadership and Safety Culture in Transport Industries

Applications are invited for a PhD research studentship in the challenging area of safety culture and safety leadership at Imperial College London, in conjunction with Abellio. The company plans to work with two Japanese companies, one a railway operation and the other a private contractor in delivering railways operations in Scotland.

The selected candidate will research the following aspects:
• Review the existing literature of current state-of-the-art the factors that influence the safety behaviour of board and executive level members of organisations.
• Review of the existing literature on the cross-cultural cooperation between organizations and safety culture.
• Identify the influencing factors that affect the behaviour of Abellio Board and Executive level managers with regard to safety.
• Develop a taxonomy that describes these factors and their levels of influence on individual personality types.
• Develop a self-reference tool/matrix for Board and Executive managers to use to help them develop their behaviours in support of improving safety culture and management maturity.

Furthermore, the selected candidate will be able to access the faculty resources Board and Executive members of the Abellio UK Board and their UK Operating Companies for the research. It is expected that safety managers and safety representatives would be interviewed confidentially to establish from experience data that referred to behaviours such as communication and what factors influenced this. It is expected that cross industry views will also be investigated.

The successful candidate will join the Lloyds Register Foundation Transport Risk Management Centre
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/transportriskmanagementcentre