Modelling safety climate in the prediction of levels of safety activity

This study examined the architecture of the relationships between components of organizational safety climate, including employee attitudes to safety issues and perceptions of the work environment, and related this to self-reported levels of safety activity. Data were collected from a large multinational manufacturing organization by questionnaire. A total of 915 valid questionnaires were returned and formed the basis for structural equation modelling and subsequent analyses. These data showed that a common structure, or architecture, of attitudes to safety issues and perceptions of the work environment could be constructed that explained levels of safety activity. The strength of employees' attitudes with regard to safety management played a pivotal role in this model through both direct and indirect paths. This is consistent with earlier findings on the importance of management commitment in organizations with well developed safety cultures. An examination of the differences between plants/sites showed that employees differed in their attitudes to safety issues, such as the management of safety and communication, and in their perceptions of workplace hazards. It is intended that this model be further utilized within the organization under study as a basis for monitoring safety performance and planned improvements in safety.     

An analysis of safety culture attitudes in a highly regulated environment

Culture is a complex construct in organizations, consisting of attitudes, perceptions, values and beliefs, which must necessarily be set in context. Many authors imply that culture is organization-wide and common to all employees. In terms of safety culture, the organizational context may determine its salience and likelihood of affecting behaviour, especially in a highly regulated environment such as the nuclear industry. This study investigates the components of safety culture and how it varies in a highly-regulated nuclear power plant. A 60-item questionnaire measuring safety attitudes and values was administered anonymously to 1550 employees at two plants in the UK nuclear industry, with a 64.7% mean response rate. Principal components analyses revealed six factors conceptually common to shop floor and management (supervisor/manager/professional) groups for both plants, relating to: management style and communication; responsibility and commitment; risk-taking; job satisfaction; complacency; and risk awareness. A canonical discriminant analysis of the items suggested that the data could distinguish three employee groups. The implications of these findings and the proposal that there are two or more safety cultures in the organization is discussed.     

An analysis of safety culture attitudes in a highly regulated environment

Culture is a complex construct in organizations, consisting of attitudes, perceptions, values and beliefs, which must necessarily be set in context. Many authors imply that culture is organization-wide and common to all employees. In terms of safety culture, the organizational context may determine its salience and likelihood of affecting behaviour, especially in a highly regulated environment such as the nuclear industry. This study investigates the components of safety culture and how it varies in a highly-regulated nuclear power plant. A 60-item questionnaire measuring safety attitudes and values was administered anonymously to 1550 employees at two plants in the UK nuclear industry, with a 64.7% mean response rate. Principal components analyses revealed six factors conceptually common to shop floor and management (supervisor/manager/professional) groups for both plants, relating to: management style and communication; responsibility and commitment; risk-taking; job satisfaction; complacency; and risk awareness. A canonical discriminant analysis of the items suggested that the data could distinguish three employee groups. The implications of these findings and the proposal that there are two or more safety cultures in the organization is discussed.     

Safety culture on the UK railway network

Safety culture is an important concept in understanding the involvement of organizations in accidents and as a tool in safety management. British Rail, the public sector company which ran the UK railway network until its privatization in April 1994, was criticized for its 'poor safety culture' following a major accident at Clapham Junction, London, in 1988, in which 35 lives were lost. Studies conducted after the accident have demonstrated that deficiencies in the organization's safety culture may be related to workers' negative perceptions of managers' commitment to safety. These perceptions underlie a lack of mutual trust between staff and managers, which has implications for the fostering of open and honest communications within the network, and for the development of a positive safety culture. Communication problems are likely to be compounded by the privatization of British Rail, which has involved the fragmentation of the network, with different bodies responsible for infrastructure maintenance and train operation. The repercussions of privatizing the railway network are discussed in the context of safety culture research.     

Safety culture: Philosopher's stone or man of straw?

This introductory paper to the special issue on Safety Culture considers some of the key issues relating to the nature, measurement and utility of this concept. It argues that there are many important questions still unanswered: what is safety culture and what is its theoretical basis (the question of definition), is it synonymous with safety climate, what are the essential characteristics of a 'good' safety culture and how might they be best measured, what are the reliability, validity and utility of existing measures of safety culture, and how does the concept contribute-if at all-to good safety systems and performance? Can an organization's safety culture be related to additional parameters (such as accident and incident performance) which are judged both within and outside the organization by the full range of stake-holders? Finally, the authors consider future issues and the future direction of work in this area.     

Measuring safety climate on offshore installations

The human and organizational factors affecting safety were examined on 10 offshore installations using the Offshore Safety Questionnaire. The questionnaire contained scales measuring work pressure and work clarity, job communication, safety behaviour, risk perception, satisfaction with safety measures and safety attitudes. A total of 722 UK offshore workers (33% response rate) from a range of occupations completed and returned the questionnaire. The 'safety climates' on the various installations were characterized by most respondents feeling 'safe' with respect to a range of offshore hazards and expressing 'satisfaction' with safety measures. Respondents reported little risk-taking behaviour and felt positive about levels of work clarity and job communication. There was a wider diversity of opinions on the safety attitudes scale, indicating a lack of a positive, concerted 'safety culture' and more evidence for a range offragmented 'safety subcultures', which varied mainly as a function of seniority, occupation, age, shift worked and prior accident involvement. It is suggested that the interaction between these differing subcultures partly determines the prevailing 'safety climate' on any given installation. The UK oil and gas industry is now trying to improve its safety culture through the 'Stepchange' initiative, which hias set itself three main targets for the year 2000 : a 50 YO improvement in the industry's safety performance; safety performance contracts demonstrating leadership's personal concern for safety as an equal to business performance and encouraging industry members to work together to improve sharing of safety information and good practice. It is suggested that the existence of a strong, cohesive culture with respect to safety is not necessarily beneficial, possibly leading to 'dry rot' and complacency. A healthy culture may be represented by a range of assumptions, values, norms and expectations as reflected in employees' differing experiences of safety climate.     

The Role of Distrust in Offshore Safety Performance

Trust is recognized as a potentially important factor in safety within high-risk industries. However, little detailed empirical research has explored how trust operates in these contexts to influence worker safety performance. The present study addresses this by (i) identifying the target (occupational group) in which trust is most important for good safety, and (ii) establishing the "type" of trust (trust or distrust) with the greatest impact on safety performance. A questionnaire survey of 203 UK offshore gas workers' attitudes of trust and distrust toward four occupational groups (workmates, supervisors, offshore managers, and contractors) and an operating company was conducted. Logistic regression analysis identified attitudes toward offshore management as the strongest predictor of safety performance at an industry level. At an installation level, safety performance was best predicted by attitudes toward contractors and workmates. Further analysis revealed attitudes of distrust as better predictors of safety performance compared to attitudes of trust. These findings suggest that safety professionals should pay more attention to the role of distrust in safety performance. They also suggest that safety initiatives should target attitudes toward specific groups for optimal effectiveness.     

团队成员目标取向与建言行为的关系:一个跨层分析

研究以国内某大型企业集团27个营销团队共201名团队成员为研究对象,采用多水平研究方法,通过构建多层数据模型(HLM),以自我激励和个体-情景互动理论为框架对团队成员个体目标导向、团队氛围和员工建言行为的关系进行了探讨.研究发现目标导向不同的个体,其建言行为也有差异,相对于发展导向,表现导向的个体更多地卷入建言行为.团队心理安全感不仅对员工建言行为有直接显著影响,而且在个体目标导向(表现导向)与建言行为的关系中有正向的跨层调节效应:团队心理安全感越高,表现导向的个体越倾向于建言行为,团队心理安全感越低,表现导向与建言行为的关系越不明显.团队氛围对于其他目标导向与建言行为关系的跨层调节效果不显著.     

Organisational safety climate and occupational accidents and injuries: an epidemiology-based systematic review

It is widely accepted among practitioners and researchers that a good safety climate results in improved safety. However, there is a lack of systematic and detailed reviews summarising and evaluating the scientific evidence underpinning the relationship between safety climate and injuries and accidents in a company. The current research addresses this gap and studies the association of safety climate with accidents and injuries at work. Nine databases were searched for quantitative studies. After eligibility and quality selection, 17 peer-reviewed papers were analysed. Quality assessment was developed applying the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies (STROBE) guidelines, together with 9 appraisal criteria from Berra and colleagues (2008), Downs and Black (1998) and the appraisal tool from the University of Cardiff Weightman, Mann, Sander, & Turley, (2004). An evaluation summary statement was then constructed analysing the strength of the evidence provided by each study. Although 15 of the 17 studies included in this review provided full or partial support for the association of safety culture with accidents/injuries at work, scientific evidence is still unclear on the causal relationship between these two variables. Research is needed, especially longitudinal and intervention studies, to demonstrate in detail this association, which has been widely accepted in the area of occupational health and safety.     

Location, Location, Location: Does Place of Work Really Matter?

This paper examines the work attitudes of home- and office-based workers. A review of the existing literature finds both pessimistic and optimistic accounts of the impact of homeworking on employee attitudes and behaviours. Drawing on a survey of 749 managerial and professional employees in knowledge-intensive industries, the study finds more support for the optimistic perspective. The findings suggest that homeworking is positively associated with employee well-being and a more balanced work–home relationship. There is no evidence that organizational citizenship behaviours are reduced by homeworking but there is some support for homeworking undermining employees' perception of the organization as supporting their careers and personal development.     

Direct and Indirect Links Between Organizational Work–Home Culture and Employee Well‐being

The extent to which an organization's culture exhibits support for its employees' efforts to balance work and personal responsibilities has been shown to influence a number of work‐ and home‐related outcomes. This study tests a model with a mix of mediated and moderated relationships to investigate direct and indirect routes by which work–home culture may affect employee well‐being. Sex differences in these relationships are also explored. Data collected from public sector employees in the UK indicate that a supportive work–home culture is significantly associated with lower levels of psychosomatic strain among employees. For women, this relationship is mediated by reduced levels of work–home interference. Different types of support demonstrate different effects for men and for women: managerial support has a more beneficial impact on women's well‐being, and organizational time demands have a more detrimental impact on men's well‐being. Recommendations for managers to boost employee well‐being include shifting the focus away from presenteeism and toward work outputs in order to reduce gender stereotypes and improve attitudes toward those using flexible work practices and family‐friendly initiatives, incorporating work–home supportiveness into the managerial performance appraisal process, and compensating or otherwise recognizing employees taking on absent colleagues' workloads.     

Nurse safety: How is safety climate related to affect and attitude?

Occupational accidents and injuries continue to be a critical concern for nurses, given the hazardous healthcare environment. This study advances the research on workplace safety by studying the process variables (i.e. job-related negative affect (JRNA) and job satisfaction) in explaining the relationship between safety climate and various safety criteria in nurses. Based on survey data from 326 nurses, our findings suggest that psychological safety climate is negatively related to JRNA, turnover intentions, safety workarounds, and workplace hazards. In addition, structural equation modelling indicated general support for a model in which psychological safety climate influences employee strain through job attitudes, including JRNA and job satisfaction. More specifically, job attitudes were found to mediate the relationship between psychological safety climate and turnover intentions, experience of hazards, and injuries. Safety workarounds did not significantly relate to injuries. The present study contributes to the ongoing improvement of interventions aimed at mitigating nurses’ injuries by integrating job attitudes into the safety climate–safety outcome framework.     

The relationship between safety–production conflict and employee safety outcomes: Testing the impact of multiple organizational climates

Safety research is understandably dominated by studies examining the impact of organizational safety climate. Yet, other climates (e.g. service climate; productivity climate) that may also influence safety-related outcomes are rarely concurrently studied. Consequently, questions regarding how different organizational climates simultaneously affect employee safety attitudes and behaviours largely remain unanswered. Multilevel data collected from public transit employees indicated that safety–production conflict (SPC) was negatively related to accident-reporting attitudes and behavioural safety compliance. As expected, among employees in workgroups exhibiting a positive safety climate, the negative effect of SPC on behavioural safety compliance was attenuated. Moreover, a positive customer service climate reduced the negative effects of SPC on reporting attitudes; on the other hand, this relationship was exacerbated among workgroups with a high-productivity climate (i.e. those emphasizing on-time performance). The need for considering multiple aspects of an organizational climate is discussed in light of these results.     

Risk, Trust, and Safety Culture in U.K. Train Operating Companies

Organizational safety culture reflects the attitudes and behaviors that individuals share in considering and reacting to hazards and risks. We first argue that trust is an underdeveloped and important concept in relation to theories of safety culture and high-reliability organizations. The article then reports findings from a two-year qualitative study of train operating companies (TOCs) in the United Kingdom, which sought to explore in detail the linkages between safety culture and the postprivatized railway industry. In-depth interviews and focus groups were carried out with a sample of over 500 employees, from four organizations, and representing all key functional levels. Our analysis suggests that the 1993 privatization, and subsequent organizational restructuring of the U.K. railway industry, has had important repercussions for both safety culture and trust relationships. We explore our findings in relation to three key constructs within "safe organizations" theories (namely, flexibility, commitment, and learning), and discuss how the safe organization model might be usefully supplemented by a consideration of trust issues.     

企业跨部门心理安全、知识分享与组织绩效间关系的实证研究

知识分享是组织学习研究领域中的一个热点话题,本研究旨在探讨跨部门心理安全对组织内部知识分享以及组织绩效的影响机制。本文实证研究发现,组织跨部门心理安全与组织知识分享、组织绩效之间均存在"倒U"关系,而知识分享会对组织绩效的提升产生正向影响,知识分享在跨部门心理安全对组织绩效的作用中扮演中介角色。研究发现有助于加深我们对跨部门心理安全与组织知识分享、组织绩效间作用关系的深入了解,为企业管理实践提供有益的借鉴和启示。     

Risk Perceptions of Offshore Workers on UK Oil and Gas Platforms

Knowledge of the workforce's risk perceptions and attitudes to safety is necessary for the development of a safety culture, where each person accepts responsibility for working safely. The ACSNI Human Factors report stresses the importance of assessing workforce perceptions of risk to achieve a proper safety culture. Risk perception research has been criticized for insufficient analysis of the causal relationships between risk factors and perceived risk. The present study reports some of the factors which predicted risk perception in a sample of 622 employees from six UKCS offshore oil installations who completed a 15-section questionnaire. This paper focuses on the accuracy of workers' risk perceptions and what underlying factors predict the perception of personal risk from both major and minor hazards.     

Managing Employee Compliance with Information Security Policies: The Critical Role of Top Management and Organizational Culture*

We develop an individual behavioral model that integrates the role of top management and organizational culture into the theory of planned behavior in an attempt to better understand how top management can influence security compliance behavior of employees. Using survey data and structural equation modeling, we test hypotheses on the relationships among top management participation, organizational culture, and key determinants of employee compliance with information security policies. We find that top management participation in information security initiatives has significant direct and indirect influences on employees’ attitudes towards, subjective norm of, and perceived behavioral control over compliance with information security policies. We also find that the top management participation strongly influences organizational culture which in turn impacts employees’ attitudes towards and perceived behavioral control over compliance with information security policies. Furthermore, we find that the effects of top management participation and organizational culture on employee behavioral intentions are fully mediated by employee cognitive beliefs about compliance with information security policies. Our findings extend information security research literature by showing how top management can play a proactive role in shaping employee compliance behavior in addition to the deterrence oriented remedies advocated in the extant literature. Our findings also refine the theories about the role of organizational culture in shaping employee compliance behavior. Significant theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Safety culture: Key theoretical issues

Abstract

The organizational preconditions to major systems failures are seen as increasingly important for risk management. However, existing empirical attempts to study safety culture and its relationship to organizational outcomes have remained fragmented and underspecified in theoretical terms. This is despite the existence of a number of well-developed theories of organizationally induced accidents and disasters. Reasons for this disfunction of theory and practice are first considered. The paper then outlines four key theoretical questions for safety culture researchers: the fact that culture acts simultaneously as a precondition both for safe operations and for the oversight of incubating hazards (the paradox of ‘safety’ culture); the challenge of dealing with complex and ill-structured hazardous situations where decision makers are faced with deep forms of uncertainty represented by incompleteness of knowledge or ignorance; the need to consider the construction of risk perceptions in workgroups, and to view risk acceptability as the outcome of a process of social negotiation; and the fact that institutional politics and power are critical for determining the achievement of safety culture goals, and in particular that of organizational learning.     

Safety culture: Key theoretical issues

The organizational preconditions to major systems failures are seen as increasingly important for risk management. However, existing empirical attempts to study safety culture and its relationship to organizational outcomes have remained fragmented and underspecified in theoretical terms. This is despite the existence of a number of well-developed theories of organizationally induced accidents and disasters. Reasons for this disfunction of theory and practice are first considered. The paper then outlines four key theoretical questions for safety culture researchers: the fact that culture acts simultaneously as a precondition both for safe operations and for the oversight of incubating hazards (the paradox of 'safety' culture); the challenge of dealing with complex and ill-structured hazardous situations where decision makers are faced with deep forms of uncertainty represented by incompleteness of knowledge or ignorance; the need to consider the construction of risk perceptions in workgroups, and to view risk acceptability as the outcome of a process of social negotiation; and the fact that institutional politics and power are critical for determining the achievement of safety culture goals, and in particular that of organizational learning.