How institutional logics shape safety perceptions and practices: Aircraft maintenance safety perspective

Professionals’ perceptions of safety related thinking in aircraft maintenance operations are still underrepresented, despite increased of safety research in aviation industry. By employing an institutional logics (ILs) theory, this article aims to explain how ILs influence safety perceptions, practices and behaviours in organizational safety. Based on a case study in an under-studied context, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with aircraft maintenance engineers in an airline based in MENA region. The interviews focused mainly on family and religion logics and how they interact with actors’ safety perceptions and practices. The findings showed that safety practices and perceptions were strongly influenced by cultural values and religious beliefs. For the first time, this article reveals that ILs offer valuable insights into the logic of family and religion in the context of aircraft maintenance safety and operations. The results showed that these logics play a basic approach in organizational safety. This study advances the current safety research in aviation and ILs literature in addressing the contextual elements on safety perception and practices of organizational safety. Therefore, it demonstrates that investigating safety perception through ILs framework improves our comprehension of safety and offers a number of explanations for safety related behaviours and beliefs that might otherwise have been perceived as illogical. Safety managers, experts, and accident investigators can assess aviation safety incidents and accidents and their prevention measures through the use of ILs approach. Keywords: Accident investigations, Institutional logics, Organizational safety, Safety perceptions, Aircraft maintenance, Aviation safety.