A.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Food Safety refers to handling, preparing and storing food in a way to best reduce

the risk of individuals becoming sick from foodborne illnesses. It is also a global concern

that covers a variety of different areas of everyday life. This includes quality and safety

through the whole food chain to ensure not to cause harm to the consumer. Since food-

related diseases can be serious, or even fatal, it is important to know and practice safe

food-safety behaviors to reduce the risk of being sick from contaminated foods or even

beverages. In this study, it reveals how retail business has been negative due to increasing

of customer’s about food safety, such as the melamine in infant’s formula and multiple

cases of produce pathogen contamination. It also shows how Hazard Analysis Critical

Control Points help reduce the likelihood of food safety incidents. In line with this, Food

safety professionals have created instruments to measure food safety based on lagging

indicators. However, no metrics based have been created on leading indicators to measure

the behavior driven by the culture of the employees who handle foods. Employees who

handle foods are influenced by cultural values and behave on a company based on the

company’s cultural influence. Thus, a leading indicator should also be measured in

cultural terms. According to the study, the result showed that there were differences in

food safety culture across the different groups, but with negligible or small effect size. As

a matter of fact, it is also suggested that food safety needs to be measured in terms of the

corporate culture of the retailer to improve the food safety around the world. It was also

stated that culture plays an important role when it comes to food safety.
B. INTRODUCTION

According to the study, in order to measure and analyze the food safety culture,

the researchers used the quantitative and qualitative methods to determine the best

educational techniques to promote food safety concepts as of the retailer’s selected

component of corporate culture. An instrument made by the researchers were used to

analyze the food safety culture of employees at different levels in charge of different

areas within the retail business. In this study, corporate culture of the selected retailer was

observed and described based on the historical data and field observations. It was

conducted in a global retailer located in the USA and included all the employees that

were willing to participate in this study. According to Northouse (207), circumstances

inside a group are caused by the leaders and its different style of leadership. It was also

stated that a company should be considered a key factor for professional development

programs used as a tool to induce the need to learn about food safety.

C. ANALYSIS

In this study, it shows that there is a need to include culture as a part of food safety

management systems of retailers and to achieve that, culture must be measured and its

relation to the culture of organizations must be described. As for this problem, it can be

solved by making food safety as the values of an organization or to the retailers with a strong

food safety culture that demonstrates to its employees and customers that making safe food is
an important commitment. In order for culture to be included in food safety management is

that one must have a strong leadership in their culture as a reflection of the importance of it

in food safety. Employees who are involved and engage with the inclusion of culture in food

safety are more likely to contribute in one’s food safety strategy. In line with this, the

management needs to walk the talk in or to be seen following the program since management

needs to lead by example. Also, it must be followed by practicing best practices focusing on

meeting or exceeding industry’s best safety practices and not just meet minimum regulatory

requirements. With this, including culture in food safety management starts from making

sure that the organization’s values or beliefs are clear to everyone working in a food

processing facility and that they can be shared with others.

D. ALTERNATIVES AND DECISION CRITERIA

Based on the result of the study, the retailers and employees of a business was

given a survey to take in order to identify the factors that were being considered to

measure the organization, the employee, leadership and the core cultural values of the

retailer. The researcher used the surveys to measure which of the retailers were fit to

include culture in food safety. A culture of food safety is built on asset of shared

assumptions, behaviors and values that organizations and their employees embrace to

produce and provide safe food. They must know the risks and hazards associated with

their specific products. In an organization of retail culture, individuals behave in a way

that represents the shared assumptions and value systems. According to the study, even

though there are similarities in the cultures of the successful retailers, all of the
 employees and peers in all levels were required to respect each other despite cultural

differences. It is important not to judge people on his/her physical appearance, answering

requests and treat all of the employees equally. It is found that this principle helps the

employees focused on the real business of the retailer and to always seek for excellence.

E. RECOMMENDATION & IMPLEMENTATION PLANS

It is important to note that leadership was required for personal issues and work-

related issues. It was also stated that the corporate culture has been identified to have a

shortage in power distance, masculine and collective. The employees and peers of the

company must follow their leader, to be included in decision making and the felt

ownership of the business. It is also important to know the measures of applying culture

in food safety in order for the people involve to understand the metrics being designed.

F. CONCLUSION

The researchers have concluded that in order to create constructs to measure food safety

culture, the three core cultural beliefs and the employee-company interactions must be

considered. The culture of the organizations must be understood and identified first

before implementing something in an organization. These are done to understand the

importance of cultural values driving the individual-organization interaction. Based on

whenever there is a food safety culture in the retailer, the factors are shown in which

strategies are needed in order to maintain it.

G. REFERENCES

Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice (4th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage Publications.

Yiannas, F. (2008). Food safety culture creating a behavior-based food safety.

management system. New York: Springer.

Ardichvili, A., Mitchell, J.A., & Jondle, D. (2008). Characteristics of ethical business

cultures. Journal of Business Ethics, 85, 445-451.

D. A CASE STUDY OF FOOD SAFETY CULTURE WITHIN A RETAILER

CORPORATE CULTURE