RESEARCH
Based at LSE, we harness advances in psychological science, digital textual data, and AI to study how organisations can develop resilient cultures that are good at managing risk and coping with uncertainty
Our research has been published in leading scientific journals, funded by research councils, foundations, and corporations, and led to demonstrated impact in industries such as healthcare, aviation, and finance
Understanding culture
We conceptualise organisational culture in terms of patterns of thought and behaviour that are common and persistent in organisations, and guided by the norms and values that employees share and the design of workplace environments. Our research uses advanced quantitative and qualitative methods and AI to develop theory and empirically establish how culture drives the successful management of risk and uncertainty high-hazard domains and situations (e.g., in healthcare, finance, aviation, energy, manufacturing).
- Studying the cultural causes of institutional failures such as accidents and scandals, including breakdowns in ‘corrective culture’ for dealing with problems, and ‘target pressure’ that causes misconduct
- Developing the concept of ‘resilient culture’ to explain the collective norms and behaviours that enable people in organisations to cope with threats and disruptions
- Studying how psychological safety, voicing and listening prevent accidents and ensure effective decision-making through creating open communication in organisations
- Investigating how organisational learning from complaints and external feedback can help to identify unrecognised or emerging problems
- Establishing the antecedents, for example good workforce relationships and employee non-technical (e.g., teamwork, leadership, situation awareness and decision-making), that underpin a healthy organisational culture and effective performance in managing risk
- Establishing how organisations build strong safety cultures that prevent industrial accidents and financial scandals
- Investigating how external parties, for example regulators and stakeholders, influence the culture of organisations
Assessing Culture
Our research aims to create a paradigm shift in culture assessment. We investigate how digital textual data sources (e.g., documents, employee feedback, consumer complaints, transcribed speeches, online discourse) coupled with AI-algorithms can make organisational culture truly visible, with analyses being situated in everyday words and actions, and using real-time measurements that provide quantitative and qualitative insight on the norms and behaviours that shape risk outcomes.
- Pioneering the development of AI-algorithms that measure culture by quantitatively scoring textual data (e.g., employee feedback, complaints, natural dialogue) and surfacing data for qualitative analysis and generation of culture profiles: our measures predict outcomes such as mortality and corporate scandals
- Conceptualising and developing unobtrusive indicators of culture that are drawn from publicly available data (e.g., online feedback, financial data, executive speeches, google searches), used to benchmark organisational cultures, and predict outcomes such as bank risk and company performance
- Developing an AI-based text analysis tool that detects safety incidents in hospitals, and predicts mortality rates
- Building ChatGPT methodologies for content analysing and drawing insight from textual data
- Constructing and validating the Environmental Culture in Organisations survey, which measure values and commitment towards tackling climate change in organisations
- Developing AI-based algorithms that analyse live dialogue to identify people engaging voicing and listening behaviour
- Building and validating a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology for measuring and comparing safety culture in the aviation industry and finance organisations
Changing culture
We conceptualise culture as something that must be led and designed: it is created not only by communication and role modelling, but by the development of social structures, institutional processes, and organisational systems that guide how people think and act. Taking a a social psychology and human factors design perspective, our research focuses on utilising new technologies to generate data and create interventions that change norms and behaviours for managing risk in organisations.
- Developing and using the Healthcare Complaints Analysis Tool (HCAT) to identify and address ‘hotspots and blindspots’ in the safety of hospital care: this approach is used to develop service improvements and has been used globally to affect change
- Designing bespoke culture solutions and interventions (e.g., improving communication, training, processes) through insights drawn from AI-augmented analysis of textual information in organisations
- Benchmarking organisations internationally on their cultures, and identifying areas for cross-industry and system learning and improvement on safety
- Improving communication and incident reporting in the aviation industry
- Applying human factors principles to design interventions for improving decision-making and error capture
- Developing incident reporting systems that foster speaking-up and the identification of errors and misconduct in domains such as finance