Search results

The purposes of this study were (1) to explore empirical challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their implications and (2) to organise those challenges into a framework.

In a multiple-case study following an exploratory, qualitative and empirical approach, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted in six cases. Representatives of all cases subsequently participated in an interactive workshop, after which a questionnaire was used to assess the impact and presence of each challenge. A cross-case analysis was performed to situate empirical findings within the literature.

Ten challenges were identified in four areas of dimensioning safety buffers: decision management, responsibilities, methods for dimensioning safety buffers and input data. All challenges had both direct and indirect negative implications for dimensioning safety buffers and were synthesised into a framework.

This study complements the literature on dimensioning safety buffers with qualitative insights into challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and implications in practice.

Practitioners can use the framework to understand and overcome challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their negative implications.

This study responds to the scarcity of qualitative and empirical studies on dimensioning safety buffers and the absence of any overview of the challenges therein.

Workplace injury and death of young persons are important concerns. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the mediating role of safety behaviours underpinning the relationship between perceived safety climate (PSC) and injuries, and the moderating roles of safety-specific transformational leadership (SSTL), general transformational leadership (GTL) and training in influencing the mediation, for young workers.

An exploratory, online questionnaire was completed by 367 university students employed in various industries. Data were analysed using moderated mediation.

Safety behaviours mediated the relationship between PSC and injuries. SSTL moderated the relationship between PSC and safety behaviours, but GTL did not. Training did not positively moderate the relationship between safety behaviour and injuries, yet may still inform us on the training by referent others since safety behaviour mediated the relationship between PSC and injuries when SSTL, GTL and training were high.

A student sample was utilised, but was appropriate in this context as it is representative of the type of workers being studied. Longitudinal data with larger diverse data sets should be incorporated.

Business owners must utilise both forms of leadership to promote a safe workplace. HR and H&S professionals must continue to encourage this promotion.

Safety training and leadership are important for policy makers and regulators to reduce workplace injuries for youth workers.

This study is the first to test youth H&S using moderated mediation. Safety specific and general forms of leadership and training are important predictors.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the psychological safety, organisation support and emotion in the workplace during the transition from office to home working during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Past studies on emotion in the workplace mostly focus on types of discreet emotion, in relation to positive and negative emotions (e.g. Connelly and Torrence, 2018; Rubino et al., 2013). Other studies reported that emotions are derived from social comparison processes (Matta and Dyne, 2020). During a crisis, the emotional responses of the workers and organisational support to the different group of employees differ due to the social exchange relationship. Hence, this study contributes to the field of organisational support by examining the organisational support as the investment of both physical and psychological resources, and the emotional responses of employees to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis during transition from office to work-from-home setting. Through thick descriptions of the workers' emotion responses to this transition, the research examined how organisational support potentially impacts the worker's experience of psychological safety.

The study was conducted in the Singapore context. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Singapore Government imposed regulatory restrictions, the “Circuit Breaker” from April 7 2020 to curb the spread of the virus infections. Most workplaces from the public service agencies to the private enterprises implemented work from home arrangements for most of the employees. The data were generated from an online survey that included self-reported text-based narratives in response to open-ended questions. Open-ended questions effectively allowed respondents to define the real-world situation in their perspectives. Salaried workers from both the public and private organisations were invited to take part in this research. Respondents comprise full-time, part-time and contracted employees from the diverse sectors. The final sample size of 131 respondents was used. A qualitative data analysis was employed to gain deeper insight into the workers' emotional reactions, including their personal experiences of organisational support and psychological safety, during the transition from office to work from home setting.

The qualitative examination, through thematic coding, reveals the phenomenon of emotion triggered by social comparison emotion and critical socio-emotional resources (i.e. task, flexibility, communication, health and safety and social support) during a health crisis. Specifically, the employees' emotional reactions were elicited from the perceived organisational support, in how organisation cares for their well-being and work contributions and, in turn, influence the psychological safety. For example, the approach of the online communication (as a form of organisation support) practised by the managers has implications on the different levels of psychological safety experienced by the employee. In addition, emotional resources can be interpreted as organisation support. The findings revealed that emotions such as anxiety, stress, unfairness, inferiority and vulnerability are triggered by perceived inequity and comparison with the decisions or resources of the referent others of higher level such as the management (upward social comparison emotion). On the other hand, the emotions of pride, empathy, shared goals and support are generated by the care, collective interest and comparison of the referent others of lower level such as the subordinate (downward social comparison emotion). This study adds theoretical depth to the phenomenon of socio-emotional resources and the implications of psychological safety and organisational support of different work groups in the organisation.

The practical implications contribute to human resource management practices to understanding the socio-emotional resources of the core and periphery groups. It is imperative for organisation to exercise equity in the allocation of resources and treatment between different groups (core and periphery). The implications of this study show the phenomenon of emotional responses arise from comparison within groups linking with perceived fairness. The managerial decisions and supervisor management style are key factors in promoting healthy emotion and psychological safety. Management style such as micromanagement and control were not favourable among employees, and autonomy, trust and empathy resonate with employees. During a crisis and major workplace changes, demonstrating employee care through feedback, timely and specific information sharing and participatory form of communication contribute to the positive perception of procedural and interactional fairness. In the initial phase of workplace change amid crisis, some element of control is inevitable. Supervisor support may come in the form of open communication in conveying the rationale for the need to exercise control in one process and flexibility may be accorded in another task. The empowerment of workplace decisions, open communication in shared goals and assurance and trust are critical in enhancing a high psychological safety.

This study examines the roles of emotion, psychological safety and organisational support among different groups of workers (full-time, part-time and contracted employees) in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. There has been scant study in examining the core and periphery groups relating to these research topics. The findings in this study reveal the phenomenon of emotions triggered by social comparison during the workplace changes and the display of different socio-emotional resources within groups. This qualitative research supported the past studies that autonomy in decision-making, supervisor support, employee care and trust affect psychological safety.

Container terminal operation is one of the most risky industries. Many of the accidents that occurred were found to be caused by human errors. However, it seems relatively little research has been conducted to examine the influence of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship on employee safety behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of leader-member exchange and safety climate on employees’ safety organizational citizenship behaviors (SOCB) in the container terminal context based on the social exchange theory.

A structural equation modeling was used with confirmatory factor analysis, and survey data are collected from 265 employees in major container terminals in Taiwan.

Results indicated that LMX is positively associated with safety climate, whereas safety climate positively influences employees’ safety citizenship behavior. Specifically, results indicated that safety climate mediates the effect of LMX on employees’ SOCB.

This study was limited to LMX dimensions adapted from the studies of Li and Liao (2014) and Vidyarthiv et al. (2014). Future research could examine the linkages between LMX, ethical climate, safety performance and supervisor leadership influence. Furthermore, this research focused specifically on employees from the container terminal operators in Taiwan. It would be valuable to collect data from employees from other countries to obtain a balanced view of the relationship between LMX, team-member exchange (TMX), safety climate and employee SOCB in container terminal operations.

This research provides a useful implication for container terminal operators to enhance LMX qualities and employee safety behavior through organizational participation, employee-helping behaviors and informing workers to obey safety rule and regulation.

Given the prevalence of accidents and unsafe behavior in container terminal operations, this research sought to examine the relationships among LMX, safety climate and employee SOCB in the container terminal context. Theoretically, this study highlights the importance of LMX and safety climate in explaining the SOCB of employees.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the understanding of industrial safety signs and messages by registered and non‐registered safety officers in Hong Kong with ten different user factors, and examine the relationship between cognitive sign features and sign comprehensibility.

The research methodology includes the survey development and appropriate statistical analyses. In total, 92 Hong Kong Chinese participated voluntarily in the study. A questionnaire survey was used to collect information about demographics, personal experience on safety and health issues, experience of reviewing safety sign information, comprehension scores, and the ratings of sign features for 30 industrial safety signs used in Hong Kong. The effect of ten user factors on sign understanding for the design of highly usable safety signs was examined.

Of the ten factors tested, only the factor of possession of registered safety officer (RSO) status was a significant predictor of comprehension performance. As expected, comprehension scores varied with the cognitive sign features of familiarity, concreteness, simplicity, and meaningfulness.

The currently used industrial safety signs should be redesigned as soon as possible, with careful consideration of cognitive sign features. To make the results more generally applicable, further research is needed to collect more data, particularly from females.

This research suggests that an effective education program for promoting the intended messages of industrial safety signs in various industries and work environments should be conducted as soon as possible. Safety officers, especially those who work in the construction industry need to play a more prominent role in ensuring workplace safety, and in transferring safety knowledge to the workers.

There is a need to enhance RSOs' risk perception and to increase awareness of the importance of safety signs through training programs, so as to improve workplace safety and organizational safety culture. The redesigned safety signs need to be launched with a public education program.

The paper's findings emphasize the need to create awareness of the importance of industrial safety and promote understanding of safety sign meanings amongst people in their work environments. Useful information for the design and use of safety signs was generated.

Given the complexities in improving safety in the construction industry globally, which is exacerbated by the complex safety environment in developing countries (DCs), prevention through design (PtD) has been established to improve occupational safety and health (OSH) where applied. However, it has received very little attention in DCs and the extant literature with limitations. Using Nigeria as a case study, the current study advances the understanding of PtD in DCs by investigating the critical barriers to PtD and other potential OSH responsibilities of designers in the construction industry.

Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews and e-interviews of architects, builders and civil engineers in Nigeria were analysed using the six-phase thematic analysis. To improve the trustworthiness of the research, triangulation, peer-debriefing, refining the interview protocol and thick detailed description were done.

The study's findings question the extant general knowledge and understanding of PtD among clients and designers and its technical aspect among designers where it is skewed to structural safety and omitted in universities' curricula. This explains the inconclusive findings of existing studies on why there is a high level of awareness of PtD but a low level of implementation. There is little client support for PtD, and designers have limited influence on clients in terms of it. The fear of liability from PtD is exacerbated by the limited legal system and lack of adequate legislation in the country. The demotivating attitudes of clients and contractors towards designers in terms of PtD are also reported, just as there are project delivery barriers such as traditional procurement not supporting PtD as design and build procurement does.

For the sustainable growth in the practice of PtD, the increased and improved quality of education and awareness of PtD is needed but this must focus on instilling a robust understanding of it among designers based on the local context. This educational requirement can be supported by statute.

Through qualitative data, the findings explain and offer insight into the inconclusive findings in the extant studies on PtD in Nigeria. Also, it contributes to improving health and safety by advancing the understanding of the critical barriers to PtD and other potential OSH responsibilities of designers in D Nigeria's construction using qualitative data.

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.

There is evidence that patient safety has not improved commensurate with the global attention and resources dedicated to achieving it. The authors explored the perspectives of hospital leaders on the challenges of leading safe care.

This paper reports the findings of a three-year longitudinal study of eight Australian hospitals. A representative sample of hospital leaders, comprising board members, senior and middle managers and clinical leaders, participated in focus groups twice a year from 2015 to 2017.

Although the participating hospitals had safety I systems, the leaders consistently reported that they relied predominantly on their competent well-meaning staff to ensure patient safety, more of a safety II perspective. This trust was based on perceptions of the patient safety actions of staff, rather than actual knowledge about staff abilities or behaviours. The findings of this study suggest this hegemonic relational trust was a defence mechanism for leaders in complex adaptive systems (CASs) unable to influence care delivery at the front line and explores potential contributing factors to these perceptions.

In CASs, leaders have limited control over the bedside care processes and so have little alternative but to trust in “good staff providing good care” as a strategy for safe care. However, trust, coupled with a predominantly safety 1 approach is not achieving harm reduction. The findings of the study suggest that the beliefs the leaders held about the role their staff play in assuring safe care contribute to the lack of progress in patient safety. The authors recommend three evidence-based leadership activities to transition to the proactive safety II approach to pursuing safe care.

This is the first longitudinal study to provide the perspectives of leaders on the provision of quality and safety in their hospitals. A large sample of board members, managers and clinical leaders provides extensive data on their perspectives on quality and safety.

This paper aims to present findings from a qualitative case study which investigated how workers engage in workplace learning for safe work in a precarious workplace. The findings from this research suggest that learning to work safely is firmly embedded within the social cultural fabric of workplaces, and is intentionally driven to maintain coherence in ideologies, values and practices for effective praxis.

This study was conducted in a petrochemical plant in Singapore. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with 20 site operators who held positions as engineers, plant workers and maintenance technicians. These site operators were directly involved in working with dangerous chemicals and high-risk equipment and processes; their conversations elicited an in-depth understanding of individuals’ experiences, providing an account of how participants learnt safe work practices in a precarious work setting. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Data were coded and analysed using an inductive analytical approach to identify key themes about workers’ learning in the workplace.

The findings suggest that learning to work safely is a socially constructed and facilitated process – leading to intentionalising what is learnt. The participants’ experiences suggest that safe work practices materialise through collective action, shared knowledge and responsibility to generally seek sameness for recursive practice. The significance of inter-subjectivity and intentionality are discussed with respect to how they intersect within the social cultural context of precarious work sites, where learning and praxis are seamlessly commingled to achieve effective praxis in workplace safety. A combination of contributions at organisation, individual and group levels supports the social cultural environment. The study concludes that a combination of mutually bound learning space, relational agency and dialogic interactions provides communicative spaces and mediates learning that nurtures inter-subjectivity and intentionality to work safely.

As the study is situated in a particular case context, replication of this research with different occupational groups in other precarious workplaces is needed for further insights on social construction of learning spaces for safety practice.

This paper concludes that deliberate and cautious efforts are necessary to create contextual conditions for learning and to promote greater inter-subjectivity and intentionality for effective praxis. Group interactions and partnerships at work are advocated to generate mindful learning and a common frame of reference that the work community recognises, values and shares. These social processes provide necessary communicative spaces for clarification and validation of what is learnt and what is being interpreted by individuals. The quality and legitimacy of guidance are also emphasised to validate the expertise of those providing guidance, effective mentorship and intervention for the distribution of knowledge. Furthermore, strong and committed leadership is necessary to sustain the social cultural architectures that will support learning and praxis for safety.

This study offers insight about pedagogical contributions to learning about safe work practices in distinct circumstances of work.

The goals of this study were to study consumer perceptions of food safety at restaurants and to compare these results to those of other food system actors.

The data for this study were gathered from telephone interviews conducted with 1,014 randomly selected US adults.

The main findings were that a substantial number of consumers think about food safety in general and particularly when eating at restaurant establishments; and while a majority of consumers stated that restaurants were doing a good job, were capable, and were committed to food safety, in comparison to other actors, restaurants ranked significantly lower than farmers, food processors and manufacturers, and grocery stores and supermarkets.

A limitation of this study was that distinctions were not made between fast food and sit‐down restaurants or other types of restaurants, e.g. chains, independent, and ethnic. These results highlight the need for more comprehensive studies on how food safety issues affect consumer perceptions of restaurants and how these perceptions affect consumer behavior.

The findings reinforce the importance of food safety behaviors at restaurants, particularly in the areas of personal hygiene and workplace sanitation, food handling, and food preparation.

This paper helps restaurant managers to better understand consumer perceptions of food safety and highlights the importance of instituting and monitoring food safety practices.