The relationship between organizational culture and safety culture in aviation organizations: An analysis at Antalya airport

The main aim of this study is to determine the relationship and impact of the dominant organizational culture in aviation organizations on employees' perception of safety culture. Rather than evaluating airports with different characteristics over a wide geography, the study was conducted specifically for aviation organizations at Antalya Airport. This airport has unique features due to the significant adaptation required during the winter when air traffic density decreases and in the summer when it rapidly increases. The study involved 398 employees working in aviation organizations at Antalya Airport. To investigate the organizational culture structure of aviation organizations, the "Organizational Culture Assessment Scale" adapted to Turkish and the aviation industry was used. Employees' perception of safety culture was measured using the "Safety Culture Survey Form," which was first implemented as a pilot study by ACI, and later conducted jointly by AAPA and AACO. The analyses of the applied scale and survey were performed using the SPSS 23.0 package program. Reliability and factor analyses were conducted. Then, the relationships between the dominant organizational culture types in aviation organizations and employees' perception of safety culture were determined through correlation and regression analyses. According to the analysis results, three organizational culture types were observed in aviation organizations at Antalya Airport. These were identified as innovative-team culture, competitive culture, and hierarchy culture. The one-way analysis of variance determined that the organizational culture type significantly differentiated between aviation organizations. As a result of the correlation analysis, a strong and proportional relationship was found between innovative-team culture and employees' perception of safety culture. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine how and to what extent organizational culture types affect employees' perception of safety culture. It has been determined that innovative team and hierarchy cultures increase employees' perception of safety culture, while the change caused by competitive culture is not statistically significant.