ATC Watcher, yes, indeed it is a matter of organizational culture rather than national culture, on the provision that National Culture does influence the organizational culture, which in turn is unique.
One thing we are all missing in the discussion here is the role of the Regulator and its interaction with AF. In all fairness and without apportioning blame or drawing conclusions, I think there are tangibles signs of either negligence from the French CAA in their oversight of AF or there is a biased relationship due to years of doing things in a certain way (i.e. retired AF employees going to the CAA and the resulting conflict of interest).
In any case, the Regulator here has a major role and has clearly not addressed the problem correctly.
Lacey was talking very properly and technically about "identifying and mitigating risks", and couldn't agree more with you in that this is what safety is about...
Years ago I remember an accident in Mexico, where a DC9 was involved in a Runway Excursion. This airline (I won't say names) was in turn in a code share agreement with a major US Airline. Because of this Code share agreement and in order to maintain it, the US investigators from this airline conducted an independent investigation of the accident and concluded something that may help your thinking on this topic.
"Although XYZ Airlines is a Safe airline, judging by the audits conducted by the National Regulator (the Mexican CAA), the US FAA, ourselves (being them the major US airline) and Insurance brokers, XYZ Airlines does not have a Safety Culture".
In other terms, you can be a Safe organization, as shown in audits, but you may not have something more important that is a safety Culture.
Think what Qantas did after the QF32 incident in SIN, they decided to ground their whole A380 fleet until the manufaturers could pinpoint the problem. This is the reflect of a mature and predictive safety culture. You can draw the conclusions on AF yourselves...