Recent efforts to develop a knowledge base for safety professionals and practitioners recognizes that most safety work is based on a loose collection of principles from management, social science, and work experience. Safety professionals and practitioners encounter multiple approaches and safety regimes with considerable variation across time periods, countries, industries, organizations, occupations, and individuals. In this paper, we build a foundation for collaborative learning by characterizing and categorizing beliefs about the causes of safety among experienced safety practitioners and identifying sources of variation associated with demographic characteristics, work experience, and cognitive style. We conducted two surveys, the first relying primarily on open-ended questions and the second using selection from a list of causes of safety. Responses from the first survey were coded into 36 categories of causes. Notably, few causes were external to the operating organization. In the second survey, we added additional causes to create a list of 42 causes from which respondents could choose their most important causes. We found considerable variation among respondents, with even the most frequent safety causes given by fewer than 60% of respondents. We grouped the 42 causes into a parsimonious yet meaningful list of 15 higher-level cause categories. Causal beliefs varied by demographic characteristics, work experience, and cognitive style. To facilitate a collaborative learning process, we need to acknowledge variability in safety management approaches as a resource, respect and appreciate contributions from varied sources, and strengthen capabilities to converse across boundaries and more effectively develop and share knowledge.

最近为安全专业人员和从业人员开发知识库的努力认识到，大多数安全工作是基于管理、社会科学和工作经验的松散原则集合。安全专业人员和从业人员会遇到多种方法和安全制度，在不同的时间段、国家、行业、组织、职业和个人之间存在相当大的差异。在本文中，我们通过对经验丰富的安全从业人员对安全原因的信念进行特征化和分类，并确定与人口特征、工作经验和认知风格相关的变异来源，为协作学习奠定了基础。我们进行了两次调查，第一次主要依靠开放式问题，第二次使用从安全原因列表中进行选择。第一次调查的回答被编码为 36 类原因。值得注意的是，运营组织之外的原因很少。在第二次调查中，我们添加了额外的原因以创建一个包含 42 个原因的列表，受访者可以从中选择最重要的原因。我们发现受访者之间存在相当大的差异，甚至只有不到 60% 的受访者给出了最常见的安全原因。我们将 42 个原因分组为一个包含 15 个更高级别原因类别的简洁而有意义的列表。因果信念因人口特征、工作经验和认知风格而异。为了促进协作学习过程，我们需要承认安全管理方法作为一种资源的可变性，尊重和欣赏来自不同来源的贡献，