How Food Safety Culture Is Operationalized for Retail Food Settings: A Systematic Literature Review

Food safety culture has been posited as an important factor influencing employee behavior in the retail food industry. Although expressed as a subset of organizational culture, it is unclear the extent to which food safety culture is being defined and measured as a distinct but related organizational concept. Through a systematic review of the literature, this study explores how food safety culture is conceptualized and operationalized in studies investigating the concept in retail food establishments. Results showed no consensus in the conceptual definition, corresponding variables, and operational indicators for food safety culture across studies. Results also showed the corresponding variables identified for food safety culture were not derived from nor aligned closely with those associated with organizational culture. Together, these results suggest researchers are measuring different aspects of the same concept and not operationalizing food safety culture as a subset of organizational culture. As the development of measures to evaluate the prevailing food safety culture in retail food establishments is a prerequisite to the quantitative investigation of its impact on food employee behavior, the observed variation in corresponding variables and operational indicators of food safety culture can lead to incomparable results across assessments and studies.