What I THINK, is that - if properly applied - Safety Management and Quality Assurance should be beneficial in any industry.
What I KNOW is that many GA operators treat it as a CASA mandated embuggerance and only pay lip service to it.
Operators put touchy-feely statements in their manuals about how committed the CEO and everyone else is to it. Some even have programs to electronically track every minor incident from initial report to closure. Unfortunately some of these incidents are so minor, and the acquittal process so painful, that they do waste people's time with meetings, investigations and supposed cures. The result is that staff soon regard it as an embuggerance just as much as the CEO. Staff go from initial enthusiasm to report every pissant event to eventually not bothering with the more serious stuff.
CEOs and bean counters are rarely ever willing to actually DO anything if it will take time, effort or money. Which reinforces the staff's jaundiced view.