Safety cultural divergences among management, supervisory and worker groups in Hong Kong construction industry

doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2005.03.009

International Journal of Project Management

Volume 23, Issue 7, October 2005, Pages 504-512

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2005.03.009 Get rights and content

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between peoples’ behaviors, attitudes and perceptions towards safety culture and to compare safety culture divergences among three levels of construction personnel: top management, supervisory staff and frontline worker by conducting safety culture survey. The questionnaire comprising general information and 36 safety attitude statements were distributed to 423 construction personnel working in ten different construction sites in Hong Kong.

The results from this study indicate that the 8 testable factors, including organizational commitment and communication, line management commitment, supervisor’s role, personal role, worker’s influence, risk taking behavior, obstacles to safe behavior and accident reports, have high inter-correlations and the three groups of respondents hold quite different regarding safety culture. These findings can give invaluable indication to the construction personnel to have better understanding of safety culture in Hong Kong construction industry.

Introduction

According to the occupational safety and health statistics of 2003, a total of 30% of the industrial accidents were related to the construction industry. Although Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region, China) government has contributed to the safety and health policy to reduce the annual accident and fatality rate, there are still at an unacceptable high level. In order to improve the current situation, one of the ways is to cultivate a good organizational safety culture.

Developing a proactive safety culture may take long time and spend large sum of money for planning, investigating and implementing into each level within the organizations. It, however, is worthy compared with invaluable health and life of human beings. Once it succeeds, the relative rewards will be achieved in terms of competitive advantage, quality, reliability and profitability. Hinze [1] advocated the idea that safety is no luxury but a necessity. In recent years, many Hong Kong construction companies have got to recognize that establishment of good safety culture can help controlling and reducing the construction costs and increase the efficiency of their ongoing operations in long term.

Unfortunately, many of them may not really know how to establish a form of safety culture – same as the culture of a country or a society [2]. Safety culture relates to the humanitarian aspects of safety as an integral component. The interactive relationships between how people behave, the attitudes and perceptions that people hold, and the situation or environment that people work in should be taken into account [3].

With reference to the previous research works and studies, some essential determinants of safety culture were evaluated. However, there is no form which can be used to create a measure of safety culture, but it can be reflected through human behavior, perceptions and attitudes [4].

In this study, people’s behaviors, attitudes and perceptions towards safety culture are investigated by means of conducting safety culture survey. The inter-correlations among 8 factors, including organizational commitment and communication, line management commitment, supervisor’s role, personal role, worker’s influence, risk taking behavior, obstacles to safe behavior and accident reports, are then explored. Finally, the divergences of safety attitude among the three workforce levels are compared.

Basing on these determinants, a number of hypotheses are derived as follows:

H1:
Organizational commitment and communication are positively correlated to line management commitment, supervisor’s role and personal role.
H2:
Organizational commitment and communication are positively correlated to accident reporting system.
H3:
Personal role is positively correlated to workforces’ influence.
H4:
Personal role is negatively correlated to risk taking behavior and obstacles to safe behavior.
H5:
There are differences in safety attitudes among the three workforce levels: top management, supervisory staff and workers.

Section snippets

A review of the existing safety culture in Hong Kong

Hong Kong construction site safety is mainly governed by the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance (F&IUO), chapter 59 and its subsidiary Regulations through the Labour Department. Prosecutions would be taken out against any breach of the statutory provisions. Besides, a self-regulatory safety management system has been enacted by HKSAR government. The system basically follows the Quality Assurance System in which it forces on asking construction firms to define, document and

Methodology

Summarizing the experience from the previous research works, a questionnaire survey was developed and conducted during the period of September 2003 to August 2004 for construction personnel who had been selected randomly from ten different construction sites in Hong Kong. The targeted respondents are classified into three groups: top management, supervisory staff and workers. The questionnaire (see Fig. 2) are divided into two parts; Part 1: general information and Part 2: 36 attitude

Results and discussion

A total of 423 construction personnel responded in this survey, in which there were 61 managers, 103 supervisors and 259 workers. Within the three groups, there are 125 respondents from the civil construction firms, 207 from private building construction firms and 91 from government authorities.

Conclusions and recommendations

The results from the Safety Culture Survey indicate that good organizational commitment and communication is highly associated with effective accident reporting, high line management commitment, active supervisor’s role and active personal role. Active personal role to safety and health resulted in high workmates’ influence and low obstacles to safety behavior.

There is significant safety culture divergence between the management group and the worker group in 5 testable factors which are

Acknowledgment

The work described in this paper was fully supported by SRG grant from City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 7001600-560).

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For the research studies on construction safety climate, the focus has been on the following aspects (Colley et al., 2013; Dedobbeleer and Béland, 1991; Fung et al., 2005; Mohamed, 2002; Siu et al., 2003): management commitment, safety rules and procedures, housekeeping and safety equipment, supervisor and coworker safety perception. However, other aspects, such as reporting (Fung et al., 2005) and preparedness (Hon et al., 2014), that are also critical to safety performance, are rarely measured. In the meantime, there are less and less injury data, which has made safety performance prediction more and more difficult.
Safety climate has the potential to affect construction safety performance. The current focus of construction safety climate research has been on management commitment, safety rules and procedures, housekeeping and safety equipment, supervisor and coworker safety perception. However, other aspects, such as reporting and preparedness, that are also critical to safety performance, are rarely measured. In the meantime, safety plateau in the construction industry has been observed in many countries; and there are less and less injury data, which has made safety performance prediction more and more difficult. All of this has necessitated us looking for a new approach. Resilience, that is a concept under development, has shown its ability to continuously improve safety performance. Thus, to enhance the existing safety climate model, this paper developed a concept called Safety Climate_Resilience (SC_R) by introducing resilience to safety climate. SC_R is measured by seven dimensions including management commitment, supervisor safety perception, coworker safety perception, learning, reporting, anticipation, and awareness. Based on 431 self-administered surveys from 68 construction sites in Ontario, Canada, SC_R measure model was validated and the interactions of the seven factors of SC_R model were also investigated. This paper leads to several conclusions. First, a resilience safety climate model was built and firstly applied to the construction industry. Second, commitment from all organizational levels, from top management, to site level, and to individual level, is the key to promoting a better safety performance. Third, safety awareness is the most important individual factor affecting the safety performance of construction workers.

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Safety cultural divergences among management, supervisory and worker groups in Hong Kong construction industry

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

A review of the existing safety culture in Hong Kong

Methodology

Results and discussion

Conclusions and recommendations

Acknowledgment

Construction safety

Improving safety culture

Study of attitude changes in people after the implementation of a new safety management system: the supervision plan

Construct Manage Econ

Philosophical perspectives on bioethics

Nourishing safety culture in the construction industry

Implementation Safety Health Construct Sites