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The contemporary workforce: Implications for organisational safety culture

Sharon Clarke (Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK)

Personnel Review

ISSN: 0048-3486

Article publication date: 1 February 2003

7917

Abstract

Companies are being encouraged to adopt a positive organisational safety culture in order to safeguard their operations against accidents. The viability of a positive safety culture within the context of a diverse workforce, characterised by a reduced number of permanent employees, supplemented with more contingent and contract workers, is considered. This review summarises theoretical and empirical evidence of the likely effects of changing employment arrangements on safety attitudes and behaviours, and implications for organisational safety culture. It is argued that it will be more difficult to integrate employees with diverse working arrangements, compared to a workforce of permanent employees, into a corporate safety culture. Human resource management techniques and practices are identified as ways of developing and maintaining positive safety attitudes across all types of employees. The need for further empirical work is discussed.

Keywords

Citation

Clarke, S. (2003), "The contemporary workforce: Implications for organisational safety culture", Personnel Review, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 40-57. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480310454718

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2003, MCB UP Limited

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