Safety in the c-suite: How chief executive officers influence organizational safety climate and employee injuries

The cross-level effect of team safety-specific transformational leadership on workplace safety behavior: The serial mediating role of team safety climate and team safety motivation

INTRODUCTION

Workplace safety not only impairs individual health but also affects economic and social development.

METHOD

Based on social learning theory, collective social learning theory, and expectancy-valence theory, using cluster random sampling method, 630 employees from 66 different work teams out of around 800 employees in a domestic petroleum enterprise were selected to participate in the research. The safety-specific transformational leadership, safety climate, safety motivation and workplace safety behavior scales were used. Data were collected in two stages. SPSS22.0 and Mplus7.0 were used to analyze the data to explore the relationship between team safety-specific transformational leadership and workplace safety behavior, as well as the serial mediating effect of team safety climate and team safety motivation.

RESULTS

The results showed that: (a) team safety-specific transformational leadership can positively influence safety compliance and safety participation; (b) team safety climate mediates the relationship between team safety-specific transformational leadership and safety compliance and safety participation; (c) team safety motivation mediates the relationship between team safety-specific transformational leadership and safety compliance and safety participation; and (d) team safety climate and team safety motivation play a serial mediating role between team safety-specific transformational leadership and safety compliance and safety participation.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

This research has both theoretical and practical significance.

Paradoxical leadership, team adaptation and team performance: The mediating role of inclusive climate

In an increasingly complex and changing competitive environment, organizations inevitably face various conflicting demands, such as the contradiction between the psychological needs of employees and the organization's performance requirements. Paradoxical leadership could focus on these competing needs of the organization and employees in multiple ways simultaneously. According to the trickle-down effect of social learning theory, we investigated whether and how paradoxical leadership may increase team adaptation and team performance. The study had a time-lagged survey design and included 254 team members and 60 leaders in 60 work teams in mainland China. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicated that paradoxical leadership is an essential predictor of team adaptation and performance, and that inclusive climate is mediating in this relationship. Our findings reveal a mechanism underlying the benefits of paradoxical leadership on team adaptation and team performance from a team-level perspective.

Adapting, adopting, and advancing change: A framework for future research in the psychology of occupational safety

INTRODUCTION

While there are numerous reviews of the research on the psychology of occupational safety, these studies provide weak guidance on where the research should go next. Accordingly, we introduce a simple framework for thinking about future research in this area: the adapting, adopting, and advancing change framework. This framework summarizes how external, technological, and theoretical developments have driven research in the psychology of occupational safety and uses these observations as evidence to imagine ways in which they may continue to do so.

METHOD

We critically reviewed seminal research in the psychology of occupational safety using the adapting, adopting, and advancing change framework. Adapting to change means considering external changes such as the fluctuating nature of work and the labor market. Adopting change refers to incorporating the latest technological and technical advances to facilitate more robust research methods and analyses. Finally, advancing change refers to theoretical advances and how they will push psychology of occupational safety research forward.

RESULTS

We highlight several avenues for future research that emerge at the convergence of the framework's three themes, including developing the safety skill construct, assessing variation in demand appraisals on safety outcomes, distinguishing safety climate from related constructs, and examining safety constructs that are usually considered as outcomes (e.g., injuries) as predictors instead.

CONCLUSIONS

In doing so, we provide a clear structure to help researchers better identify the most effective directions for future research on the psychology of occupational safety.

The effects of community safety support on COVID-19 event strength perception, risk perception, and health tourism intention: The moderating role of risk communication

The community is crucial in preventing COVID-19 pandemic. By employing 313 online surveys, it is found that the community safety support enhances risk perception, disruption recognition, and criticality recognition but it negatively impacts on novelty recognition. Additionally, risk communication could moderate the relationship between risk perception and health tourism intention. These findings reveal that people would pay more attention to the risk information and they could join health tourism in the post-pandemic period to enhance their personal physical and mental health. Therefore, health tourism enterprises should appropriately strengthen risk communication and improve people's health awareness to further promote healthy tourism consumption.

Effects of Top Management Team Characteristics on Patent Strategic Change and Firm Performance

Patent strategy is increasingly recognized as a vital contributor in promoting core competitiveness of an enterprise. A top management team (TMT) has been indicated as one of the key factors driving changes in patent strategy. Based on upper echelons theory, this study examines how TMT characteristics, including, team diversity, emotional intelligence, and safety climate, influence enterprise patent strategic change and, hence, the business outcome. The data from 930 top managers in 228 enterprises showed that the changes in patent strategies are significantly influenced by the characteristics of top managers. These aforementioned internal TMT factors have diverse effects on the speed and scope of the enterprise patent strategic change, which in turn affects firm performance in a positive and negative way, respectively.

How work-family conflict predict HSR drivers safety performance? Empirical evidence from China

Purpose

Drawing on ego depletion theory, this study aims to provide insights into the effect of work-family conflict on the high-speed railway (HSR) drivers’ safety performance by examining the mediating role of ego depletion and the moderating roles of work-family centrality and supervisor safety support.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 243 HSR drivers from 7 railway bureaus in China were surveyed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Both work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict have direct and positive effects on HSR drivers’ ego depletion and indirect effects on both safety compliance and safety participation via ego depletion. Moreover, both the direct effect of work-family conflict on ego depletion and its indirect effect on safety performance are moderated by work-family centrality. Supervisor safety support plays a buffering role in the relationship between ego depletion and safety performance.

Originality/value

This study examined the relationship between work-family conflict and safety performance based on the perspective of ego depletion theory. The findings testify to the importance of reducing work-family conflict among HSR drivers pursuant to maximizing safety.

COVID-19 event strength, psychological safety, and avoidance coping behaviors for employees in the tourism industry

The impact of COVID-19 on the emotions or behaviors of employees in tourism enterprises would be worthwhile for investigation since COVID-19 has harmed not only people's health and lives but also most tourism enterprises. By identifying the effect of COVID-19 event strength on avoidance coping behaviors, the behaviors isolated from customers unlikely beneficial for tourism enterprises, we not only revealed that COVID-19 event strength indirectly affects avoidance coping behaviors through either the fear of external threat or psychological safety, but also disclosed that supervisor safety support would moderate the effect of psychological safety on such coping behaviors. We argue that understanding potential causes, such as the fear of external threat and psychological safety, and identifying possible solutions, like supervisor safety support, may be key factors for restarting tourism enterprises successfully under the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Workplace Injury and the Failing Academic Body: A Testimony of Pain

This article explores how meanings around risk, health/safety, and workers' bodies are constructed in an academic context. I do so through the study of a single academic in Australia who sustained a back injury at work. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews and documents, I attempt to show the embodied experience of an injured worker's struggle for care, recovery, and survival in the neoliberal academy. Writing from the nexus of workplace health and safety and critical management literatures, the raw testimony of this injured academic lays bare the violences that are enabled within a wider culture of self-discipline, individualism, and performativity in the university. The story presented in this article exposes how physiological and psychological injuries can be exacerbated through the very health and safety procedures that are designed to prevent and alleviate harm. Please note that this article contains references to suicide and suicidal ideation.

Key drivers of trucking safety climate from the perspective of leader-member exchange: Bayesian network predictive modeling approach

PURPOSE

Safety climate, which is defined as workers' shared perceptions of organizational policies, procedures, and practices as they relate to the true or relative value and importance of safety within an organization, is one of the best indicators of organizational safety outcomes. This study identifies key drivers of safety climate from the perspective of leader-member exchange (LMX). LMX is a theory describing the nature and processes of social interactions between a supervisor and a subordinate. This study examines the impact of individual drivers and combinations of drivers on safety climate through Bayesian Network simulations to predict practices which most effectively improve safety climate in the trucking industry.

METHOD

Survey data were collected from 5083 truck drivers in a large U.S. trucking company. Bayesian Network analysis was used to identify key drivers (factors) of safety climate and the best joint strategies for improvement. The impact of the drivers on safety climate was assessed and the simulation identified their potential impact independently and in concert with other drivers.

RESULTS

The results from Bayesian Network analyses showed that the effects of LMX on organization- and group-level safety climate were conditionally dependent on four other drivers including psychological ownership, supervisory integrity, situation awareness, and safety communication. Among the five contributing factors, supervisory integrity and LMX had the strongest independent effects on organization- and group-level safety climate. Moreover, the results indicated that the best two joint strategies for promoting organizational (company/top management level) safety climate were LMX and psychological ownership as well as LMX and situation awareness, whereas the best two joint strategies for improving group (workgroup/supervisor level) safety climate were joint optimization of LMX and safety communication as well as LMX and psychological ownership.

IMPLICATIONS

Based on the study results, the strategies that may have the most potential to improve trucking safety climate are: enhancing leaders' ability to engage in high-quality exchanges (e.g., caring about employees), developing training to encourage employees/leaders to deliver on promises, and providing employees with more autonomy to enhance their ownership.

12-Year longitudinal study linking within-person changes in work and family transitions and workplace injury risk

INTRODUCTION

Despite the rich tradition of research on predictors of workplace injury, most studies rely on cross-sectional, between-person designs. Furthermore, prior research has often overlooked the possibility that factors outside the work domain can influence the occurrence of actual injuries at work. To address these limitations, the current study examined the effects of work and family demands on the occurrence of workplace injury. Drawing on the intuition of the work-home resources model (W-HR), we investigated how within-person level changes in demands and resources from both domains influence work injuries over a 12-year period.

METHOD

We used 12 years of longitudinal data (N = 7,820) to study the long-term within-person changes in work and family domains and to capture the event of low frequency incidence such as workplace injury. Specifically, we conducted multilevel analyses to study the links between within-person change in time and energy resources both in work and family domains and within-person change in the likelihood of experiencing a workplace injury.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

The findings showed that within-person changes in work hours, spousal work hours, income and number of children, were significantly associated with changes in the likelihood of experiencing a workplace injury. We conclude with a discussion of implications for theory and future research of workplace injuries. Practical application: The research provided useful insights on the intimate association between work and family domains in the context of safety management.

Safety climate: Systematic literature network analysis of 38 years (1980-2018) of research

The objective of this paper is to examine the safety climate knowledge epistemology using bibliometric and systematic literature network analysis. For this purpose, bibliometric information of research article published on safety climate topic was retrieved from Scopus databases. In total, 494 articles published between 1980 and 2018 were retrieved. These articles cover 1373 authors, 203 journals and 2511 keywords. Information collected was analyzed employing bibliometric and network analysis approach using an open source computer program R and VOSviewer. The main findings of the study reveal the publication trends in safety climate literature since 1980 to present, identifies most productive authors, and most influential research work. Our findings suggest that Huang and Zohar are the top publishing authors in safety climate domain. Zohar's work has the highest citations. The most influential articles have been published in Journals such as Accident Analysis and Prevention, Journal of Applied Psychology, Safety Science and Journal of Safety Research. Network analysis of these articles yielded co-citation networks of most influential works, bibliographical coupling network and keywords co-occurrence network yielded the structure of safety climate knowledge. Findings of our research have theoretical and practical implications in the area of safety climate.

An Investigation of Healthcare Worker Perception of Their Workplace Safety and Incidence of Injury

Background: Managing the safety climate in health care is a promising tool for improving employee and patient safety in the health care work environment. Gaps in the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of safety climate, as well as the evidence base for its practical application in health care remain. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the number of work injuries occurring in health care work units and associated safety climate beliefs. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted utilizing organizational staff survey data collected by a large medical hospital in the Midwest in 2015. Employees (n = 32,327) were invited to identify safety climate perceptions via survey. Injuries, days restricted, and days absent were identified through the Hospital's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) log. Zero inflated negative binomial regressions used injuries as dependent variables and safety climate perceptions as independent variables. Findings: In all, 23,599 employees completed the survey (73% response rate) across 1,805 employee work units which were defined as groupings of employees reporting to a single supervisor. We found that there was an association between fewer injuries and health care workers indicating that they share responsibility for compliance with safety rules and procedures (relative risk [RR] = 0.98, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.98, 0.99]). Conclusion/Application to Practice: This study supports the use of a safety climate measure to assess working units' perceptions of employee safety. A continued focus on the health and safety of employees who interact directly with patients is warranted, as well as employees who do not provide direct patient care.

The Knowledge Management and Safety Compliance in OECD Economies: Some Experience for Jordan Industrial Sector

The paper investigates the role of knowledge management and safety compliance in OECD economies and applies some recommendations for the Jordan industrial sector. This study reveals the main problems with safety compliance which are resulted in fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries. The main purpose is to determine the innovation and economic factors that influence safety compliance to provide a relevant recommendation for improving the situation. The research object is chosen as countries because they present generalized information on safety compliance and provide an opportunity to develop some policy recommendations. In the frame of the paper investigation of the knowledge management and safety, compliance was carried out in the following logical sequence: first, it provides the relevant literature review, then it discusses methodology and data description, and at last, it presents empirical results with policy recommendation and conclusions. There was collected panel data for 29 OECD economies on such indicators as fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries per 100 000 workers, wealth, energy efficiency indicators, gross fixed capital formation, patent applications, high-technology exports and manufacturing value-added. Methodological tools of the research were the random effect estimations in Stata for the latest available data 2010-2015. The obtained results showed that the increase in GDP per capita in selected OECD economies reduces the fatal occupational injuries per 100 000 workers. Thus, an increase in GDP per capita by 1000 USD leads to a decrease in fatal occupational injuries per 100000 workers by 0,039. Also, an increase in GDP per capita by 1000 USD leads to an increase in non-fatal occupational injuries per 100000 workers by 7,8. The other important innovation variables are high technological export and patent application by residents, which reduce the level of non-fatal occupational injuries. Systematization of literary sources and approaches for solving the problem of safety compliance indicates that both economic and innovation parameters have to be addressed to reduce fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries. The results of this research can be useful for policy-makers who are responsible for knowledge management and safety compliance. Keywords: knowledge management, safety compliance, OECD economies, innovations, occupational injuries.

Destructive forms of leadership

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between abusive supervision and employee health and safety outcomes in Study 1 and to examine the effect of inconsistent leadership, operationalized as the interaction between transformational leadership and supervisor incivility, on employee safety participation in Study 2.

Design/methodology/approach

In Study 1, survey data were gathered from n=145 healthcare workers. In Study 2, survey data were gathered from n=177 nurses.

Findings

A partially mediated structural model was estimated in Study 1 and the results show that the model provided a good fit to the data χ2 (1)=1.27, p=0.23. Abusive supervision predicted safety climate (β=−0.41, p<0.01) and psychological health (β=−0.27, p<0.01). Safety climate, in turn, predicted psychological health (β= 0.40, p<0.01) and safety participation (β= 0.37, p<0.01). Study 2: moderated regression analysis showed that inconsistent leadership significantly predicted employee safety participation, F(5,144)=4.46, p<0.01.

Originality/value

Theoretical and practical implications for creating psychologically healthy workplaces through interventions aimed at improving leader effectiveness are discussed.

Measuring Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Organizational Climate: Instrument Adaptation

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

No tool exists measuring certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) organizational climate. The study's purpose is to adapt a validated tool to measure CRNA organizational climate.

METHODS

Content validity of the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Organizational Climate Questionnaire (CRNA-OCQ) was established. Pilot testing was conducted to determine internal reliability consistency of the subscales.

RESULTS

Experts rated the tool as content valid. The subscales had high internal consistency reliability (with respective Cronbach's alphas): CRNA-Anesthesiologist Relations (.753), CRNA-Physician Relations (.833), CRNA-Administration Relations (.895), Independent Practice (.830), Support for CRNA Practice (.683), and Professional Visibility (.772).

CONCLUSIONS

Further refinement of the CRNA-OCQ is necessary. Measurement and assessment of CRNA organizational climate may produce evidence needed to improve provider and patient outcomes.