Communication and industrial accidents

This paper deals with the influence of organizational communication on safety. Accidents are actually caused by individual mistakes. However the underlying causes of accidents are often organizational. As a link between these two levels - the organizational failures and mistakes - I suggest the concept of role distance, which emphasizes the organizational characteristics. The general hypothesis is that communication failures are a main cause of role distance and accident-proneness within organizations. A general classification of communication is presented, and safety communication and obstacles are distinguished. The analysis at various levels does not falsify all my hypotheses, and several dimensions of communication seem to be of interest for the safety.