Workplace safety: a multilevel, interdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

While research on workplace safety spans across disciplines in medicine, public health, engineering, psychology, and business, research to date has not adopted a multilevel theoretical perspective that integrates theoretical issues and findings from various disciplines. In this chapter, we integrate research on workplace safety from a variety of disciplines and fields to develop a multilevel model of the processes that affect individual safety performance and safety and health outcomes. In doing so, we focus on cross-level linkages among national, organizational, and individual-level variables in relation to the exhibition of safe work behavior and occurrence of individual-level accidents, injuries, illnesses, and diseases. Our modeling of workplace safety is intended to fill a theoretical gap in our understanding of how the multitude of individual differences and situational factors interrelate across time to influence individual level safety behaviors and the consequences of these actions, and to encourage research to expand the limits of our knowledge.

Citation

Burke, M.J. and Signal, S.M. (2010), "Workplace safety: a multilevel, interdisciplinary perspective", Liao, H., Martocchio, J.J. and Joshi, A. (Ed.) Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Vol. 29), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-7301(2010)0000029003