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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.

This paper aims to report on themes of root cause of injury emerging from a qualitative study of investigations into serious workplace injuries undertaken by the Nova Scotia Department of Labour and Workforce Development, Occupational Health and Safety Division.

The study used systems‐based safety management as a theoretical lens and a qualitative grounded theory approach to inductively identify patterns and themes in the root cause of injury. Investigations were purposefully selected and analyzed through document review supplemented by interviews.

A number of themes of root cause of injury emerge from the data reflecting a lack of commitment to safety within the organization and a lack of positive safety leadership by management. Workplace culture is identified as a reflection of beliefs and assumptions of managers which impacts safety behaviour. A trend toward identifying the victim as a cause is also addressed.

Data are limited to investigations of serious injuries reported to the enforcement agency, thus focusing on negative experiences. The identification of root cause of injury may not always be the focus of the investigation, and the nature of acute serious injury limits the industry sectors represented. A need for further investigation across other industry sectors and inclusion of chronic injury is indicated.

These themes represent a cross sectoral perspective and can be used to guide development of prevention and intervention programs, corporate priorities and public policy.

The paper reports on a study of patterns in the root cause of workplace injuries.

Road trauma remains a significant concern internationally. Traffic crashes rank within the top three leading causes of death for individuals aged between 15–44 years old, with nonfatal casualties occurring at around 30 times the rate of fatal incidents. Historically, road safety research has not captured factors relating to driving purpose. However, more recently, researchers have focused on the importance of driving for work. Over a third of traffic volume represents commuting or driving in the line of employment; improving workplace road safety practices represents a tangible way of reducing road trauma. This chapter considers the link between safety culture and best practice in workplace road safety. It is argued that best practice is not a term to define individual safety practices, but a system of practices that create a culture of safety. This research uses data collected on organizations workplace road safety practices within the Australian context. This data has been collected by the National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP); an initiative that constitutes a network of organizations and academics working together to develop a positive road safety culture. Twenty-four case studies are presented of organizations that have implemented workplace road safety programs to improve their safe driving culture. Qualitative analysis was conducted to systematically categorize the safety initiatives and their indicators of success. Almost all case studies expressed the importance of developing a safety-first culture in the workplace. Third-party regulation, internal policy and corporate social responsibility form the foundation of workplace safety. However, it was the culture and attitude towards the safety initiatives that achieved effectiveness in the long-term. The findings of this research support the argument that best practice is best achieved when integrated within a culture that values and prioritizes safety, rather than implemented in isolation to other elements in the workplace system.

The modern workplace contains many physical and interpersonal hazards to employee physical and psychological health/well-being. This chapter integrates the literatures on occupational safety (i.e., accidents and injuries) and mistreatment (physical violence and psychological abuse). A model is provided linking environmental (climate and leadership), individual differences (demographics and personality), motivation, behavior, and outcomes. It notes that some of the same variables have been linked to both safety and mistreatment, such as safety climate, mistreatment climate, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature and call for additional research into the human, operational, and regulatory issues that contribute to workplace safety in the supply chain.

Following the safety typology of Brown, this paper identifies several potential research opportunities that can increase awareness of the importance of improving a firm's workplace safety practices. To inform the Brown typology, the paper follows the procedures described in Carter et al. and Maloni and Carter to conduct the comprehensive review of the safety literature across six logistics and transportation journals.

This paper identifies 108 articles which inform the Brown typology. The paper reports how the logistics and transportation safety literature has evolved across the human, operational, and regulatory safety domain across the following journals: International Journal of Logistics Management, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Transportation Research Part E, and Transportation Journal. The paper identifies 14 future research opportunities within the workplace safety in the supply chain domain.

The 14 future research opportunities that have been identified can have a positive effect on practitioners confronted with safety issues.

Given the importance of workplace safety, it is important that firms across all echelons of the supply chain improve their safety practices. This paper contributes to the literature and highlights important managerial and public policy concerns on workplace safety performance in the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to address a deficiency in the literature by exploring the impact of negative workplace safety announcements on firm performance. The authors analyze the issue from a corporate social responsibility perspective and explore ways supply chain managers can contribute to improve firm performance through the development of safe working environments.

Utilizing a sample of 227 negative workplace safety announcements, this paper explores the implications of negative workplace safety announcements on the stock price of a firm using event study methodology.

The authors find that negative workplace announcements are associated with an abnormal decrease in shareholder value. Furthermore, the authors find evidence that negative workplace safety announcements have a more pronounced negative effect on firm value in the present environment than in any previous time period.

Operations managers need to play leading roles in ensuring safe working environments. The results provide the support needed to acquire the financial resources necessary to mitigate exposure to unsafe working conditions.

This study explores the impact of negative workplace safety announcements on a firm’s stock performance. It is the first large-scale study to look at public announcements of workplace incidents and to explore the impact of such announcements in the context of time.

The question of health and safety at work is a central issue for trade unions. In Britain it is an area of concern where there were important legislative initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s, although surprisingly this has received relatively little attention in the debates about trade unionism. This neglect results in an aspect of union activity about which little is known. Explores through a detailed longitudinal study of a middle‐range engineering firm, from the late 1970s into the 1990s, the ways in which trade unions organize and act on health and safety questions. Argues that it is almost “routine” that workers face dangers and hazards at work, a central feature of the work and employment experience of most workers. However, this is often difficult to deal with as individual issues, or as matters which are subject to collective consideration. On the one hand, workers often appear to accept the dangers and hazards they face. On the other hand, managements are preoccupied with questions relating to production and finance, rather than the day‐to‐day problems faced by workers. This tension suggests that the future wellbeing of workers in unionized workplaces lies not so much with legislative provisions and rights at work, but in education and the organizing ability of workplace unions, raising and addressing what often seem like individualistic problems in collective ways.

This paper aims to contribute to an understanding of how individual characteristics and perceived contextual conditions shape reflection in professional work, particularly in workplaces that provide a variety of work experiences related to changes. The authors examine the effects of personal initiative, self-efficacy and perceived psychological safety in work relations with colleagues and supervisors on individuals’ reflection at work.

A sample of 84 client advisors who had recently been affected by major changes in retail banking workplaces participated in the study. The participants completed a questionnaire consisting of instruments to map their self-rated personal initiative, self-efficacy beliefs, reflection at work and perception of psychological safety in work relations with colleagues and supervisors. The data were analysed by performing correlation analyses and hierarchical regression analyses.

The results revealed that both individuals’ personal initiative and self-efficacy significantly positively affect reflection at work. An individual’s perception of psychological safety – particularly among peers – positively predicts reflection.

This paper enriches the research on reflection in professional work, particularly against the backdrop of workplace changes. This is done by emphasising the power of individuals’ proactive role and initiative-taking work behaviour; positive beliefs in their own capabilities, e.g. managing the various opportunities involved in workplace changes; and their perception of a psychologically safe environment within a work group that is characterised by interpersonal trust, mutual respect and supportive cooperation.

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 purpose of this paper is to explore employee perceptions of communication in psychologically safe and unsafe clinical care environments.

Clinical providers at the USA Veterans Health Administration were interviewed as part of planning organizational interventions. They discussed strengths, weaknesses, and desired changes in their workplaces. A subset of respondents also discussed workplace psychological safety (i.e. employee perceptions of being able to speak up or report errors without retaliation or ostracism – Edmondson, 1999). Two trained coders analysed the interview data using a grounded theory-based method. They excerpted passages that discussed job-related communication and summarized specific themes. Subsequent analyses compared frequencies of themes across workgroups defined as having psychologically safe vs unsafe climate based upon an independently administered employee survey.

Perceptions of work-related communication differed across clinical provider groups with high vs low psychological safety. The differences in frequencies of communication-related themes across the compared groups matched the expected pattern of problem-laden communication characterizing psychologically unsafe workplaces.

Previous research implied the existence of a connection between communication and psychological safety whereas this study offers substantive evidence of it. The paper summarized the differences in perceptions of communication in high vs low psychological safety environments drawing from qualitative data that reflected clinical providers’ direct experience on the job. The paper also illustrated the conclusions with multiple specific examples. The findings are informative to health care providers seeking to improve communication within care delivery teams.