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www.sname.org/sname/mt October 2013 decision maker may lose face because it can be stated that the situation should and could have been anticipated and avoided through better planning. erefore, while the safe decisions have a determined but relatively small cost, the risky decisions may pose a threat of catastrophic consequences to life, environment, process, and/ or property, but have the advantage that the consequences and losses are not bound to happen. ere is a relatively high pos- sibility of no delays, no o -hire, and no other costs resulting from the decision. e risk is often underestimated if the deci- sion maker believes the general safety level is high. In summary, these decisions have motivating factors that intuitively in uence the decision makers. is intuition is governed by values, which again are formed by the organizational culture. e four moti- vating factors are the expected advantage of risky decision; the expected costs of risky decision; the expected bene ts of safe deci- sion; and the expected costs of safe decision.It is not only the Catch-22 dilemma that makes the decision more di cult in practice than in theory. ere is also a bias in motivation of the stakeholders, depending on who carries the cost and who receives the bene ts. A tolerable risk for the o cer may be unacceptable for the charterer. Consider the following example. A deci- sion (such as the decisions listed earlier) has a 1 in 10,000 chance of an accident. A shipping company has 10 decision mak- ers (for example, captains) who make this decision every year. e chance that they will experience this incident is 1 in 1,000. A charterer (or oil major) employs 10 companies, which is equal to 1 time per 100.For an individual captain, a 1 in 10,000 chance may be perceived as toler- able. He will probably never experience the consequence himself. e charterer, on the other hand, will experience this incident 100 times as often, which is not at all acceptable. Furthermore, the con- sequences of a spill, to use this example, will hit the charterer much harder than the shipping company or the decision maker, because the risk imposer pays? principle opens up for a penetration of the corporate shield of the oil majors. It is therefore, and for the charterers in par- ticular, important to have cultural values and a working environment that reduce the cost of safe decisions through social support and understand- ing. It should be an environment that imposes a determined social cost of taking risky decisions through reduced social acceptance and disciplinary actions. Such motivating factors are some of the characteristics evident in so-called high reliability organizations; companies that are highly exposed to risk, but still have extremely good safety performance. Three levels of culture A common way of describing organizational culture is the phrase how things are really done in the company, and why they are done as they are.? Edgard Schein, a professor at MIT Sloan, stated that organizational culture must be understood on three levels. First, it is key to understand the observable side of how things are done. Examples are observable artifacts such as practices, pro- cedures, dress codes, housekeeping, and the physical workplace. e next level is what people tell you about how things are being done in the organization. ese descriptions often depict how things ought to be and not always how they truly are. is does not necessarily imply that the actual way of working is inten- tionally covered up; rather, it indicates that the employees (often LOOKING UNDER THE SURFACE