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This paper aims to assess the ways through which the concept of health, safety and environment (HSE) is perceived by workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) oil and gas industry. The study focused on different aspects of the HSE culture and how employees with and without leadership responsibilities differed in their conceptualization of HSE culture.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted for 30 staff of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the UAE. The interviewees were purposively selected which included both those in leadership and non-leadership roles.

The findings revealed that the interviewees viewed HSE culture as a descriptive term, a causal phenomenon, a systemic approach or a legal requirement/obligation. Interviewees in the production and maintenance units mentioned safety most often. Employees and managers exhibited negligible differences in their usage of the HSE culture concept. Managers predominantly featured in the narratives as important drivers of HSE culture. Physical conditions, behavior and procedures, management, competence and collaboration emerged as important components of a sound HSE culture.

To enable better communication and subsequent improvement of the HSE culture, an analogical HSE culture “vehicle” was developed in the study. The vehicle is a novel illustration based on the key roles of managers and employees, as well as the main components of a sound HSE culture.

Concern for health, safety and environment (HSE) is increasing in many developing countries, especially in energy industries. Improving power plants efficiencies in terms of HSE issues requires considering these issues in performance assessment of power generation units. This study aims to discuss the use of data envelopment analysis methodology for the performance assessment of electrical power plants in Iran by considering HSE and conventional indicators.

Installed capacity, fuel consumption, labor cost, internal power, forced outage hours, operating hours and total power generation along with HSE indices are taken into consideration for determining the efficiency of 20 electric power plants or decision-making units (DMUs). Moreover, DMUs are ranked based on their relative efficiency scores.

Results show that HSE factors are significant in performance assessment of the power plants studied in this research, and among HSE factors, health has the most powerful impact on the efficiency of the power plants.

The approach of this study could be used for continuous improvement of combined HSE and conventional factors. It would also help managers to have better comprehension of key shaping factors in terms of HSE.

The success of an organization that is operating in a volatile industry and in an increasingly uncertain external environment depends on various factors. Although existing literature mentions factors that could be considered as prerequisites of success for the continuity of business, there is limited research done specifically in the fuel/energy logistics industry within the context of United Arab Emirates. Using case study as a methodology, the present authors aim at understanding the growth model and strategic success factors of an energy logistics company, established in Dubai, the “Tristar Group.” With a presence in more than 21 countries, the group has over 22 years of history with 4 major service offerings under its portfolio. During its tenure, Tristar has achieved more than 70 awards and accolades, both regional and global in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), safety, quality, employee engagement, and strategic partnerships. The strategic drivers that have influenced the success of the organization include: responsible leadership and strategic agility, building a safety culture through strategic alliances, customer retention through service excellence, CSR and sustainability initiatives, employee empowerment & engagement, and enhanced service offerings through integrative growth strategy. In conclusion, the case study recommends the following future areas for research, namely, the impact of global scanning on corporate growth strategies, the types and nature of tools & interventions to be used for sustaining a safety led culture and the capabilities required for an organization to be resilient and anti-fragile.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceptions of safety officers on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) norms extended to the workforce in Indian industries, understand implementation levels and find out deficiencies existing therein.

In this study, the authors utilized factor analysis to develop an instrument specifically responsible for assessing OHS norms in three major industrial sectors through a broad‐based questionnaire survey. The pattern of influence of input parameters on outputs such as injury level and material damage is difficult to establish, possibly due to existence of some nonlinear relationship among them. Therefore, a neural network approach is adopted to carry out sensitivity analysis and identify important deficient items.

Exploratory factor analysis has been carried out on the responses to the designed questionnaire. In total, nine factors with 23 items have been extracted and interpreted. As neural networks are capable of mimicking human cognitive process, the perceptions mechanism of safety officers can be easily modeled via neural networks. Sector‐wise deficient items have been identified and strategies for their improvement have been proposed.

The major limitation may be the number of industrial sectors considered in the study. Although the proposed model is quite generic, its performance needs to be tested with other categories of industries.

Although perceptions of safety officers on their immediate work environment help to formulate constructive safety policy and procedures, involvement of a few representatives from the workforce during the implementation level may assist to substantially reduce injury level and material damage, since the workers are more conversant with work practices, are exposed to risk environments and can sustain injuries if accidents occur.

The paper uses advanced statistical and intelligent techniques for assessment of OHS practices. A comparative evaluation of present practices among three major types of Indian industry has been made. Further, the paper proposes an OHS instrument for Indian industry. The paper offers new directions for researchers to devise a comprehensive methodology that aims at reducing occupational health risks.

Research in the field of intrapreneurial behaviour (IB) is developing in terms of the personality results of employees in various occupations. An important developing field is the study of how personality traits (PTs) influence occupational results. While previous theories like situationism focus on the impact of situations, the role of situations as a catalyst for personality in the context of IB has not been explored. Theories like person-job fit have also established the personality-job resemblance for performance measures. This paper aims to conceptualize the activation of PTs for IB responses from employees using trait activation theory (TAT).

The TAT explains the personality-triggering effect in diverse situations for performance measures. Plenty of research studies have established IB of employees as a performance measure at the individual level that further rejuvenates organisational performance measures. The current study aims to conceptualise how personality and situational factors interact to affect IB outcomes in firms using the TAT. Employees in different occupations utilise personality coherent conflict handling styles (CHS) to manage conflict situations, which might serve as situational cues to activate personality effects in employees engaged in IB.

A theoretical framework for understanding how situational cues activate PTs for IB development has been proposed in this study.

The findings of the study have repercussions for pedagogy and the practices that are currently used in human resource management.

The study concludes with a series of propositions by arguing and supporting literature on existing conceptions of the trait activation process. Attempting to advance the conceptualisation of TAT, the study also offered implications for theory, pedagogy and practice regarding the relationship between PTs, CHS and IB.

Previous research has identified factors that enable lean change to be sustained. What remains unknown is how the interaction effects amongst these factors vary as lean change programmes mature. When are particular factors at their most influential?

Using a data and investigator triangulated qualitative research strategy, this paper tests an a priori model of change sustainability factors. In phase one, the research reveals the influence and significance of the model's change sustainability factors within 13 manufacturers. In phase two, four factors (Leadership, Political, Individual and Managerial) were selected for in-depth case study analyses in three manufacturers.

These point to when in the lean change, certain factors have the most influence on its sustainability. The Leadership factor and political factor are essential at the beginning and remain influential throughout. Employees' individual commitment (Individual factor) is significant in sustaining the change but it is at its most influential in the later stages. The Managerial factor (management approach) is influential in the mature stages of the programme.

Recognising where to put maximum focus during a lean change programme as it matures is crucial for management.

Sustaining lean change has not been studied from the perspective of what factors need to be emphasised at different stages in the programme for successful maturity to occur. Through empirical validation, this study helps address this knowledge gap.

Interesting because – Researchers have found that the majority of lean implementations fail – changes to structures and working practices are made only to see the gains dissipate. Previous research has suggested that multiple factors including leadership, culture and politics influence the change towards a lean organisation. While studies have shown that such factors play a role, what has not been studied is the time, that is, when the factors influence the change process. This study investigated when 11 factors have the most influence on lean implementation. Theoretical value – The study extends the state-of-the-art understanding of implementation of lean in organisations by adding a time element. It is found that in order to have a change that is sustainable, that is, lasting at least 18 months, factors that indicate the importance to the organisation are influential during the entire implementation process. This includes how central the change is to the organisation, the influence of leadership that sets vision and goals, and the implementation methods. Factors that can set things in motion such as the influence of important stakeholders are important at the beginning of the implementation process but then decline in influence over time. While factors that seem to have to do more with how companies operate have less influence at the start but become more influential over time. These include employees' commitment, the managerial style and approach, the organisational policies and structure, and the organisational culture. Practical value – Introducing lean into an organisation and gaining its sustained benefits is often not successful. While factors have previously been identified that influence the success of lean implementation, this study provides additional practical insight. It helps manufacturers be more effective by pinpointing which factors should be focused on during the various stages of the implementation process.

Human resource management.

The case can be used on courses related to human resources management (HRM), which are offered in management programmes like MBA/PGDBM. The case could also be used in management development programmes, seminars and workshops that have HRM as a component of the programme. The case can be used effectively for classroom discussions as well as in distance learning programmes.

The case looks into the HRM practices at a leading Indian construction company – ABC Constructions. The case tries to explain the management perspectives behind the people practice initiatives undertaken by the company in order to recruit/retain and nurture talent. The case also explains the basic principles underlying its human resource policies. It tries to explain the initiatives taken by ABC Constructions to meet the challenges posed by the changing business environment, as the company moves beyond the borders of the country of its initial operations. The case provides an overview of unique challenges faced by a company in the Indian construction industry, where a significant number of people executing its projects are not its permanent employees.

The students would get a fairly good understanding of existing good practices in the field of human resource management, especially in the context of a multifaceted and labour intensive construction industry in the Indian corporate scenario. Anecdotes of actual experiences with respect to people management would facilitate greater understanding of the complexities involved at the grass root level of functioning and implementation. Theoretical inputs relating to training could be better understood through the customised programmes provided by the company for its diverse workforce. The HR challenges faced by the top management as a company grows and expands to new markets can better be understood.

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This paper aims to improve operational efficiency and minimize accident frequency in cold storage facilities through adopting an effective occupational safety and health program. The hidden knowledge can be extracted from the warehousing operations to create the comfortable and safe workplace environment.

A fuzzy association rule-based knowledge management system is developed by integrating fuzzy association rule mining (FARM) and rule-based expert system (RES). FARM is used to extract hidden knowledge from real operations to establish the relationship between safety measurement, personal constitution and key performance index measurement. The extracted knowledge is then stored and adopted in the RES to establish an effective occupational and safety program. Afterwards, a case study is conducted to validate the performance of the proposed system.

The results indicate that the aforementioned relationship can be built in the form of IF-THEN rules. An appropriate safety and health program can be developed and applied to all workers, so that they can follow instructions to prevent cold induced injuries and also improve the productivity.

Because of the increasing public consciousness of occupational safety and health, it is important for the workers in cold storage facilities where the ambient temperature is at/below 10°C. The proposed system can address the social problem and promote the importance of occupational safety and health in the society.

This study contributes to the knowledge management system for improving the occupational safety and operational efficiency in the cold storage facilities.

This paper aims to examine the European Union (EU) 95/2014 Directive’s impact on large public companies. It chose Italy as a pivotal country that made non-financial information assurance mandatory, going beyond the EU Directive’s original requirements. Specifically, it investigates how the UE Directive fosters institutionalisation of the non-financial reporting (NFR) process in organisations.

Two large public companies in Italy are used as case studies. Data are gathered from annual and integrated reports, institutional websites and semi-structured interviews with the managers and employees involved in different organisational positions. The authors adopted the neo-institutional theory as a theoretical lens to identify the organisations’ response to the (external) institutional pressures influencing corporate reporting practices.

The findings demonstrate how the EU Directive fostered changes to large public companies’ reporting practices and external pressures contributed to influencing changes to internal organisational practices in terms of new internal processes, procedures and structures. These changes are motivated by the companies’ need to guarantee reliable information to be produced in their non-financial reports.

This paper helps academics and policymakers to advance NFR practices by understanding regulatory factors that can foster changes in the internal reporting process and responsibility within organisations.

The findings provide some empirical insights to foster reflections on the EU Directive’s effectiveness in changing reporting practices. This paper contributes to enriching the literature on institutional theory in shaping mandatory non-financial disclosure by identifying the institutional pressures influencing the effectiveness of regulations to change NFR practices.