Search results

Although research on prefabricated construction has gained increasing attention in recent years, limited efforts have been devoted to investigating safety issues in the off-site manufacture, especially workers’ behavioral intentions to work safely. Thus, research is needed to identify the motivational factors determining off-site construction workers’ safety behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate workers’ safety behavior by examining the determinants of behavioral intention in the off-site manufacturing plants in China.

Theory of planned behavior (TPB) was modified and used in this study to explain how the elements in the hypothesized model interact. Data were collected using a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling technique with partial least-squares estimation was used to analyze the data collected.

The findings of this study indicated that workers’ tendency to engage in safety behavior is positively related to attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and behavioral habit, among which attitude toward the behavior and behavioral habit have most significant influences on safety behavior. This finding provides a better explanation on the pathways and the impacts of the crucial factors on the safety behaviors for the off-site manufacture.

The possible innovation of this research lies in its attempt to understand the antecedents of workers’ safety behavior in the off-site construction environment, which may make original contributions to construction safety research and practice. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge in TPB. Corresponding countermeasures are put forward in order to improve workers’ safety behavior in off-site construction.

This study aims to apply the affective events theory and psychological contract theory to investigate how job satisfaction and psychological safety mediate the effect of the behavioral integrity of supervisors on the organizational commitment of employees.

A questionnaire survey was conducted using purposive sampling. In total, 500 questionnaire copies were distributed, and 453 responses were collected, of which 441 were valid (valid response rate = 88.2%).

The behavioral integrity of supervisors has a direct negative effect on organizational commitment but significant positive effects on job satisfaction and psychological safety, and job satisfaction and psychological safety have significant positive effects on organizational commitment. Job satisfaction and psychological safety have significant mediating effects on the association between the behavioral integrity of supervisors and the organizational commitment of employees.

Leaders and top management should “practice what they preach,” integrate honesty into organizational culture through training and establish a code of conduct to ensure that employees uphold their commitments. Companies should establish appropriate disciplinary systems and norms related to work and other aspects of organizational culture; they should also establish fair, just and open assessment systems to minimize the gap between their employees’ actual and expected earnings.

This study is the first to simultaneously consider the mediating effects of job satisfaction and psychological safety on the association between behavioral integrity and organizational commitment.

This study aims to show what interventions in human factors can effectively reduce construction workers' unsafe behavior.

A diagnostic intervention model targeted the construction workers' weakest internal factors. The workers' behavior and cognition data were collected via a questionnaire and a video camera system from two medium-sized construction sites. A safety supervisor accompanied each site supervisor to improve construction workers' internal factors by implementing the designed intervention measures.

The statistical analysis results confirmed a persistent positive effect on construction workers' safe behavior by improving internal factors. Among the intervention programs applied, those aimed to improve the subjective norms, safety knowledge and attitudes had the most significant effect sizes.

The findings of this case study advise project managers to design a specific behavioral intervention that aims at improving construction workers' significant internal factors, including subjective norms, safety attitudes, habits and knowledge together with demographic characteristics to reduce construction workers' unsafe behavior.

While the declining rate of construction accidents approaches an asymptote which is still high, this study suggests that targeting the individual internal factors through diagnostic interventions is the key to further reduce the rate by improving construction workers' behavior.

Performance management involves using behavior modification techniques to improve organizational performance. The application of performance management to the area of occupational safety is especially well matched, since most workplace injuries can be attributed to behavioral problems (i.e., unsafe acts). This investigation further extends the growing body of literature on safety performance management to yet another industry—offshore oilfield diving. It further bridges the gap between behavior modification theory and practice by heavily incorporating in‐house personnel to implement the performance management interventions.

Using social exchange theory (SET) and Cooper’s (2000) model, the purpose of this paper is to operationalise a comprehensive model of safety culture and tests whether SET factors (supervisor-employee relationships and engagement) predict safety culture in a causal chain.

The model was tested using surveys from 648 healthcare staff in an Italian acute care hospital and analysed using structural equation modelling.

Safety behaviours of clinical staff can be explained by the quality of the supervisor-employee relationship, their engagement, their feelings about safety and the quality of organisational support.

The model provides a roadmap for strategically embedding effective safe behaviours. Management needs to improve healthcare staff’s workplace relationships to enhance engagement and to shape beliefs about safety practices.

The contribution of this paper is that it has empirically developed and tested a comprehensive model of safety culture that identifies a causal chain for healthcare managers to follow so as to embed an effective safety culture.

The main goal of the current research was to investigate whether and how leaders in health care organizations can stimulate incident reporting and error management by “walking the safety talk” (enacted priority of safety).

Open interviews (N=26) and a cross-sectional questionnaire (N=183) were conducted at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital (REH) in The Netherlands.

As hypothesized, leaders’ enacted priority of safety was positively related to incident reporting and error management, and the relation between leaders’ enacted priority of safety and error management was mediated by incident reporting. The interviews yielded rich data on (near) incidents, the leaders’ role in (non)reporting, and error management, grounding quantitative findings in concrete case descriptions.

We support previous theorizing by providing empirical evidence showing that (1) enacted priority of safety has a stronger relationship with incident reporting than espoused priority of safety and (2) the previously implied positive link between incident reporting and error management indeed exists. Moreover, our findings extend our understanding of behavioral integrity for safety and the mechanisms through which it operates in medical settings.

Our findings indicate that for the promotion of incident reporting and error management, active reinforcement of priority of safety by leaders is crucial.

Social sciences researchers, health care researchers and health care practitioners can utilize the findings of the current paper in order to help leaders create health care systems characterized by higher incident reporting and more constructive error handling.

Previous research studies have testified that safety culture positively affects safety performance. However, the progression by which safety culture affects safety performance has not yet been examined. Also, how safety culture affects the overall safety performance at different levels of the organization is yet to be explored. In order to address this issue, the purpose of this paper is to study the effect of multilevel safety culture upon safety performance over time.

A conceptual causal-loop diagram is constructed using the group model building approach to establish the relationship between safety culture components (e.g. psychological, behavioral and situational) and the factors associated with safety performance (e.g. risk level, safety behavior, unsafe conditions, unsafe acts and incident rate). Considering the dynamic nature and intricacy of the safety management system, the system dynamics approach has been employed to develop the model.

The results indicate that the safety culture at the tactical level (middle management) and operational level is much more effective than strategic level (top management) in ameliorating the safety performance of the organization.

The scope of this study is limited to the effect of multilevel safety culture on safety performance. The focus is on the dynamics of personal, behavioral and situational factors of top management, middle management and workers to reinforce the safety performance of the organization. Future research can be protracted to build other models of safety.

First and foremost, the findings summarized in this paper can be implemented by organizations to achieve the total safety culture to upgrade safety performance.

This paper presents the holistic view of multilevel safety culture in an organization’s hierarchy. It shows how multilevel level safety culture in an organization interacts with the safety management system to enhance the safety performance of the organization.

This paper identifies the critical factors that influence the attitudes of construction workers towards safe behaviour on construction sites. It studies these attitudes by using a research model that links three themes: safety management implementation strategies, attitudes of workers about safety and behavioural factors displayed by construction workers. This model is used to frame the responses of 126 directly employed construction workers in 10 companies. Some 56 variables were identified as having a potential influence upon attitudes to safety. The initial data analysis found that 12 technical factors significantly correlated to the development of strong positive attitudes towards safety management. Second‐order analysis, using factor analysis, isolated five variables that had a major influence on safety attitudes. The five factors were: organizing for safety supervision and equipment management, industry norms and culture, attitudes to risk taking and management behaviour.