You're probably right in that the term's sometimes used as a smokescreen or buzzword. However, if you accept that accidents generally don't happen in isolation but are the culmination of chains of events and made more or less likely by pre-existing conditions (many of them personality-driven, e.g. is the boss a sociopath, how tight is the money, do people come here to just build hours and move on, do the employees generally get on or is it everyone for themselves ... etc etc) then safety culture becomes a more tangible thing.
In essence, do we really care about quality, efficiency and dare I say integrity, or are we all about appearances? Anyway, I digress, but the term 'safety culture' can mean something or nothing depending on who's bandying it around, is the simple truth.