Binnema, Gerald wrote:
> What is culture? We are using this word but I think that we all have
> different ideas about what this really means. To my way of thinking
> culture is simply "the way we do things." If you get a group of people
> together for a while they start doing things in the same way. They
> develop shared meanings, values and eventually some traditions. When I
> was flight instructing I noticed that each year's class of students
> would develop a culture that was distinct from the class before them and
> the class after them. It is just normal human behaviour to develop
> relationships inside a group and to forge some kind of identity for the
> group.
>
> Creating a "culture free" cockpit sounds impossible because we need to
> have a "way of doing things" in the cockpit. To be culture free sounds
> like we would do things differently everytime we sat in the front end of
> the airplane. The goal should be to have a culture that promotes the
> kind of behaviour that optimizes safety. In the past we have glorified
> cockpit cultures that were definitely unsafe, when we promoted the
> rugged individuality of the captain, and the unquestioned obedience of
> the subordinates. So the challenge for CRM is to change cockpit culture
> to one where there is more open communication etc etc.
>
> But you could also mean by "culture free" cockpit, the concept that as
> we enter the cockpit we leave behind our broader cultural baggage, ie.
> our different notions about authority, prejudices, or chauvinisms that
> might be part of our background. We might wish for everyone to walk in
> and assume the standard role of Captain, FO, FE, or FA regardless of the
> gender, age, nationality, or appearance of the other people we are
> working with. This is probably a meaning for "culture free" cockpit
> that we might see as an ideal and might be a concept to promote.
>
> Gerry Binnema
> Regional Avaition Safety Officer
> Transport Canada